The other day, a friend was sitting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with a friend when a friend of the friend appeared. Somehow a recent incident came up. On May 1, a 24-year-old, white ex-marine named Daniel Penny put a thirty-year-old black man named
Crime
The Maligned City
Lately, members of my Zoom writing group, most of whom live in the western United States, have been dumping on New York City. One has created a character who deems New Yorkers rude and always insisting on having the last word. Another cited the Kitty
Justice in a Time of Coronavirus
A friend of mine committed a crime and is now confined in a so-called "minimum security federal prison camp" that is experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak. My friend's crime was failing to file certain disclosure documents with the Securities and
The Criminal Receptionist
Antonia, a warm, famously doe-eyed woman in her thirties, was one of three receptionists at my former law office. Their long desk was in an area accessible to members of the public, while the rest of us worked safely behind code-locked doors. We
Texas
There were two uplifting stories out of Texas last week. Both began badly. After the mosque in Victoria, Texas, burned down, Jews from the town’s temple went around to one of the mosque’s founders and handed him the keys to the synagogue. (The fire’s
Heart and Mind
In 1981, when I was representing criminal defendants on appeal, Vicky, a girl I’d known since childhood, was murdered. Vicky was the youngest daughter in the family that my family was closest to when we lived in Sheffield, England, between 1964