Chris Powell

January 21, 2008 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Last July, when Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Haley and Michaela, were raped, bound, set afire, and thus murdered in their home in Cheshire and the crime was immediately attributed to a couple of career criminals on parole, most people in Connecticut had the same question:

By CHRIS POWELL

4 minute read

April 05, 2013 | Connecticut Law Tribune

The emphasis on prohibiting sales of high-capacity rifle magazines is pathetic.

By Chris Powell

3 minute read

August 06, 2007 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Credit Governor Rell and state legislative leaders for not affecting shock about the failures of the state's criminal-justice system that have been exposed by the atrocity in Cheshire. If the governor and the legislators now know what to do, it is only because they have known all along.

By CHRIS POWELL

3 minute read

December 06, 2010 | Connecticut Law Tribune

When Connecticut's new governor and state legislators, contemplating state government's financial collapse, remark that "everything is on the table" for economizing, they're probably not thinking about the criminal law, since there are no line items in the budget for criminal laws.

By CHRIS POWELL

4 minute read

September 18, 2006 | Connecticut Law Tribune

New Haven these days is getting shot up and disintegrating as much as Hartford is. So, as Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez is pursuing professional hockey as if it might restore his city, a member of the New Haven Board of Aldermen, Joyce Chen, is proposing that her city enact a curfew for everyone under 18.

By CHRIS POWELL

3 minute read

May 01, 2006 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Connecticut's judiciary imploded from the top last week amid an act of gross misconduct by the retiring chief justice. Shocking and disgraceful as it was, it may have been the prerequisite for fixing the greater misconduct, the judiciary's perversion of the law into a license for unaccountability.

By CHRIS POWELL

3 minute read

July 30, 2012 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Surely there are ways of strengthening federal gun control laws that would do no harm to Second Amendment rights. But the recent movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., and the recent three murders in Bridgeport in three days are generating more hysteria and political evasion than relevant proposals.

By Chris Powell

4 minute read

March 11, 2013 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Not since Watergate prompted Connecticut to pass its Freedom of Information Act in 1975 has the public's right to know been in such jeopardy here. Strangely, Governor Dannel Malloy is the biggest part of the threat,

By Chris Powell

4 minute read

February 15, 2013 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Complaining about a defamatory error in Steven Spielberg's new movie, Lincoln — the false depiction of Connecticut congressmen voting against the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery — U.S. Rep. Joseph D. Courtney has started a controversy.

By Chris Powell

4 minute read

December 26, 2005 | Connecticut Law Tribune

Two years ago, Connecticut was mortified to discover that its governor had been taking kickbacks from state contractors, not only for his political campaigns but also for his personal use. Having invoked the threat of impeachment to install a new governor, Jodi Rell, Connecticut today apparently is supposed to be mortified because the new governor's chief of staff told state agency heads about a fundraising event for the new governor's campaign, on-the-job politicking that was against the new governor's formal policy, and may have asked some of the agency heads to encourage attendance at the fundraiser, which would have been against the law for them.

By CHRIS POWELL

3 minute read