If Words Could Kill

I'm just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it...

If words could kill, I’m pretty sure I’d already have solved the problem of what to do about the national disgrace the Russians helped elevate to the presidency of the United States.

Almost as soon as I wrote that sentence, maybe even a little bit before, I began to doubt myself. Not the part about the malignancy in the White House; I’d cut that out in a keystroke. But I’ve known many criminals whose lives were shaped by the words they heard while growing up, usually from their fathers or mothers. Their lives weren’t taken by words, but their sense of self-worth — and by extension the worth of others — surely was.

A juvenile court judge in Massachusetts was much more sure of himself when he convicted a young woman of involuntary manslaughter, a couple of years ago. Lawrence Moniz, who many criminal defense lawyers feel can’t reach mandatory retirement age soon enough, ruled that Michelle Carter, using words …