Connecticut Bar Journal

Review by William F. Dow, III*

Connecticut Criminal Legal Forms:
Richard M. Marano of Marano & Diamond.The Atlantic Law Book Co. (West Hartford, Connecticut). 1999. 486 pp. $135.00.

     Richard Marano has authored and compiled a mountain of criminal motions and related legal forms and placed them together to a three-ring binder entitled "Connecticut Criminal Legal Forms". (Atlantic Law Book Company, 1999.)
This volume is comprehensive. It covers everything from soup (Order for Hot Meals, p.338) to nuts (Order for Competency Examination p.383), from A (Appearance. p.17; Alibi, p.251; Acquittal p.336) to almost-Z (Youthful Offender, p.61).

     If you ply our trade in this state, Rich's book is one of the tools you have to have. It touches all of the bases. The motions and forms within its covers, Rich will agree, do not all bear the stamp of Louis Brandeis or even Alan Dershowitz. What the book does do is put in one place a collection of all relevant criminal forms, almost every conceivable motion and other useful tools. For example, there are retainer letters (p.5, 8); a list
of available diversionary programs (p.58); applications for victim compensation (p.81); motion to secure testimony for a witness from another state (p.312);

restoration of electoral privileges (p.380), so forth and so on. Not to be forgotten, of course, are the crucial post-trial motions that all of us use but none of us want to admit to having used, including Motions for Judgment of Acquittal (p.341), for a New Trial (p.346) and the always-handy Motion for Extension of Time to File Brief (p.361).

     Sprinkled throughout the book are the regular meat-and-potato motions necessary for performing the basics of our day-to-day practices. Nearly all of them touch all of the proper procedural bases (i.e., proper renumbering of the Practice Book sections and relying upon the State as well as the Federal Constitution). Some of the motions, but not all, include my personal favorite catch-all paragraph:

     And for such further reasons as may become apparent upon the hearing of this motion

     This book covers all of the terrain. It gets the job done. And, importantly it saves a lot of brain power. I cannot imagine how much it took to put this together. A nice piece of work.

*of the New Haven bar.
                                                                                                                                                          

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