Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Somewhere in his voluminous writings , criminal defense attorney Norm Pattis, a very “good” – quote marks intended – lawyer, makes the case for jury nullification. His argument runs along these lines: We trust jurors with our property, our lives and our sacred honor, why then should we not trust them to bring in a just verdict athwart the instructions of a judge or the presentation of highly edited evidence? In the modern (Kafkaesque?) trial, the defense and prosecution are permitted to argue during various sidebars and out of the hearing of a jury the fine points of law according to which this or that piece of evidence, germane or not, should or should not be presented to the jury. Why not allow all evidence, save fictional evidence, to go to the jury and allow lawyers to argue at trial whether or not the data is pertinent?

Another politician, this time Mayor of Hartford Eddie Perez, has been arrested – for a second time – for having commited what would have been considered in the age of Tammany Hall politics as usual. The mayor has been arrested under RICO statutes , for trading his influence at city hall for discounted work on his Bloomfield Avenue home and attempting to extort money from a private developer for the benefit of Abraham L. Giles, once an influential North End politico. RICO legislation was designed to prosecute drug lords and criminals connected with the Mafia, but it has been applied for the past few decades by aggressive prosecutors to political crimes. The college professor who drafted the legislation said it should never be used to prosecute politicians. Mr. Perez's lawyer, Huber Santos claims the charges leading to the second the second arrest were filed “intentionally to defeat our ability to have a jury trial and vindicate the mayor of the charges that are pending.” He is as...