Kendall Coffey on Criminal Law, Politics
~ Kendall Coffey, on the fairness of the Ferguson grand jury process in the case of Officer Darren Wilson. “I feel pretty clearly that rather than a leaderless grand jury investigation, this was a grand jury that was being led to a conclusion of innocence. […] It’s just the questions a defense lawyer would have asked Officer Wilson – ‘didn’t you feel that your life was in jeopardy?’ Well of course you know what the answer is going to be. ‘Didn’t you feel like, in effect, that the shooting was justified?’ Not only does that tell the witness to say he’s innocent, it tells the grand jury members there in the room that this prosecutor is signaling very clearly that the prosecution thinks that officer Wilson is innocent.” (2014 MSNBC Politics Nation with Rev. Al Sharpton Interview.)
Kendall Coffey on Crime and Punishment, Criminal Law, Lawyers
“…I’m going to put my former prosecutor’s hat back on. Grand jurors swear that when they step into that room that they’re going to maintain grand jury secrecy. That’s the deal going in. There are a lot of law enforcement values for that. So my view is that is what everybody agreed to, that’s the law, that’s the oath the grand juries take and that covenant should not be set aside by a judge.” ~ Kendall Coffey on Spinning the Law with Steve Malzberg
Kendall Coffey on Criminal Law, Federal Law, International Law, The Power of Media
“…what’s so important about this law is, it applies to torture wherever it takes place in the world if one is perpetrated by a U.S. citizen, which happened to be the case with this defendant, but also, if somebody else steps foot in the United States who has committed torture crimes in a foreign country, that person can also be prosecuted.” Kendall Coffey on the trial of Chuckie Taylor.
Kendall Coffey on Business Law, Crime and Punishment, Criminal Law, The Power of Media
“You know so many times the interest of the public sort of drops off after the sentencing. This time, Rick, I think a lot of the victims are going to want to know where he’s staying now that he’s going from the “penthouse”– they want him to be going to the “big house.” Kendall Coffey on Bernie Madoff.
Kendall Coffey on Crime and Punishment, Criminal Law, Death Penalty
“We have a love-hate relationship with the death penalty. We see these despicable crimes; we want the maximum punishment applied to people who brutally kill children or to terrorists. At the same time we’re very concerned about mistakes being made, both mistakes with respect to selecting who is worthy of dying, if anyone, and mistakes with respect to the actual administration of execution. And these kind of cases, where horrible pains and horrible mistreatment occurs in the course of an execution, are very troubling to Americans and obviously of great concern to the United States Supreme Court.” Kendall Coffey on the death penalty.
