Monthly Archives: June 2018

Government – Just Leave Us Alone!

There was a time when a diary that you wrote in long hand, in India ink, kept confidential in a false drawer in your worn mahogany desk, was private, and safe from the prying eyes of anyone including our government – as a matter of law.

Not so anymore.

I advise my clients these days to destroy their mental notes.

From the vantage of a criminal defense lawyer (and “recovering” federal and state prosecutor), I’ve seen the most craven governmental intrusions into individual privacy – shocking to any Accused person who never before had to endure the unwanted embrace of a criminal prosecution.

Little has improved since the author’s privacy article published in 1972

Little has improved since the author’s privacy article published in 1972

Here in Loudoun County, if you’re arrested and denied bail, when you are jailed in Loudoun’s Adult Detention Center (ADC), don’t make the mistake of talking about your case on the jail house phone with your wife (or anyone else), because everything you say is taped – and they’ll use it against you.

We have an “expectation” of what is private, predicated upon our 4th Amendment right to be secure in our person and property, and the penumbra of other constitutional rights.  This is what must be protected.

Who would expect it was right and just to intercept a family conversation when the Accused has no other way to talk to his family?

We believe we get to control what information is circulated about ourselves – in or out of jail.

But practice and the law is more complicated than what we might fairly expect and what common sense dictates.

When I was a puppy law student, I was concerned with privacy, so much so that I wrote about it for our journal, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

Our technology was relatively primitive in the 70’s.   Indeed, I wrote how intrusions into a person’s privacy might not have been possible “if the information was manually handled and manually disseminated.”  Continue reading

A Dad’s Duty

Dad_in_profile_St_Thomas_cuWhen younger, a child, your child, is the Gerber creation, a puffy cheeked, but still inarticulate goo-gooing charmer, consuming your every eager and cherishing attention without end or complaint.  And you wouldn’t have it otherwise.

There are the parental touches, for comfort, amusement, the cooing assurances, the baby talk, the light play, washing, dressing, cleaning, among the many acts that introduce your child to a world of sensation, of caring and of love.

Anything less would be neglect, and we know random or failed attention to a child’s needs in any familial or institutional setting prompts, among other things, poor impulse control, social withdrawal, problems with coping and regulating emotions, low self-esteem, pathological behaviors including tics, tantrums, stealing, self-punishment, and poor intellectual functioning.

Good parents, Dads and Moms, prepare their children for the world coming at them.

And here’s the rub.  It is never over.  They are always our children no matter that they become adults. Continue reading

On Suicide

A troubled man – sketch by the author

A troubled man – sketch by the author

Mike was older and I thought invincible.  One day he summoned us to visit him at a hospital. Mike was having tests and, when we were alone, he said, “I feel great, don’t feel any different.”  He paused, struggling to understand what he felt, “but they tell me I have cancer that will likely kill me.  It doesn’t seem possible.  But I’m going to fight it.”

Mike took the painful therapy to combat the cancer but, in the end, it was too much for him and he cut short his own life.

What incredible pain or suffering makes life not worth living and compels one to desire death instead?

We understand intuitively that those who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9-11 to avoid the intense heat and flames were suicides only technically, that they were more like homicides, forced to choose how to end their lives.

In recent days, we have had two celebrated persons who seemed to “have it together” and yet they took their lives.

The Kate Spade news headline that Kate had taken her life prompted one lady close by to say involuntarily, “No, it can’t be.”  It wasn’t the purses that Kate designed, so chic, functional, artful, and “different,” though that was part of it, some have said.  It was how Kate made others feel, her vision of life, now suddenly ended.  Kate’s husband said, “There were personal demons she was battling.” Continue reading

RFK – A Man of Courage and Compassion

RFK, Investigator Walter Sheridan, and their “target,” IBT Pres. James Hoffa

RFK, Investigator Walter Sheridan, and their “target,” IBT Pres. James Hoffa

Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed 50 years ago on June 5, 1968.

In difficult times, “Bobby” had spoken of the dignity and equality that was the promise of the Declaration of Independence yet to be fulfilled.  He also spoke of peace.

In 1967, I was a Fordham College Physics undergrad when one of our political circle, T.R. Ellis, who was working for “Bobby,” writing speeches, told us we were welcome to spend time with Bobby when he visited the Bronx Rose Hill Campus to give an important address.

Bobby was soft spoken, seemed modest, and we talked.

When the time for Bobby to give his address was upon us, we stood nearby, about 50 feet from Bobby, on University steps overlooking a field before us of eager witnesses, quite eager ourselves.

A change came over Bobby, he seemed to gather himself, his voice loud and firm, he spoke with passion.

Bobby said, there was a Chinese Curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

He said, “Like it or not we live in interesting times.”

He paused, “These are times of danger and uncertainty but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.” Continue reading