UNDERDOG - Criminal/DWI Attorney for Fairfax/Northern Virginia/Md. & beyond.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

One of the wonderful things about practicing in metropolitan Washington, D.C., is the rich mix of the local people's national and ethnic backgrounds, including a wide array of languages.

What is a lawyer to do when a potential client or existing client does no speak sufficient English to communicate with the lawyer? Here is what I do:

Once the case is scheduled for court, it is essential to notify the court to arrange for a court-supplied interpreter. Beware about the varying quality of court-provided interpreters. Federal trial courts are very stringent in selecting interpreter, at least for Spanish. State courts seem to run the gamut. Administrative hearings where I practice seem the most risky. Suffice it to say that merely being fully bilingual is not sufficient to interpret, particularly in combative litigation setting where the objections and judicial admonitions to follow evidentiary rulings are flying.

Fortunately, I am fluent in French (since 1975) and proficient in Spanish (since 1983) to satisfy most language issues between me and clients. When I have a potential client or actual client who speaks any language other than English -- and does not speak sufficient English -- my ideal is for the client to pay for a qualified interpreter to assist my client's communications with me.

Price ranges for qualified interpreters in my geographic area seem to run in the neighborhood of $85 hourly, sometimes for a two hour minimum, which often is a longer time period than I need for an initial consultation. I have not tried finding overseas telephonic interpreters who might charge less, but the problem in doing so is that the interpreter then sees neither me nor my client, which can detract from the quality of interpretation.

I see no alternative to assuring that a potential client and actual client and I fully understand each other. To settle for less than such a full understanding disserves both the lawyer and the client. This means needing to be prepared for a potential client to decline to meet when I require that s/he bring along a professional interpreter.

In some instances, the potential client has a friend or family member who is fully fluent in both English and the client's language. When I agree for the friend or family member to interpret, I make clear to the client that there may become communications that are too sensitive and confidential to have anyone but an interpreter, paid by the client, assisting us.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

During the last day of the Trial Lawyers College in 1995, some people shared their expectations of returning to their usual lives, many very much changed people returning to people who had not experienced the four weeks spending time ten miles from the nearest paved road. I saw it as an opportunity for my clients to benefit from what I had learned and how I had grown, and to share what I had learned with interested fellow criminal defense colleagues.

Both the TLC and the National Criminal Defense College's Trial Practice Institute emphasize thinking outside the box, approaching trials from the level of persuading humans rather than the overintellectualized lawyer-speak level, and loving (in a brotherly and sisterly and compassionate way) our clients so much that we translate that caring into finding the extra sparks of inspiration, energy, effort, and time to prepare and present as winning a case as possible.

Applying these lessons often requires transcending business as usual in courtrooms that leads many judges to focus on moving the case along at the expense of giving true meaning to the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, and that leads prosecutors to wonder aloud (whether disingenuously or not) why "we can't just do this case like we have always handled similar cases." Judges are more amenable to the lawyer who shows that s/he is not going to waste the court's time on the road to doing things differently from the way the judge is usually accustomed to seeing lawyers present cases. If the lawyer engages the judge with his or her case preparation and presentation, that might make the judge all the more interested in and willing to do things differently than s/he usually sees them done.

The power of powerfully brainstorming cases with lawyers and non-lawyers cannot be underestimated. The fresh eye and inspiration that people not at the center of the case might have can be astounding. For that reason alone, particularly when a client probably needs to testify (giving up the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in a criminal case) for us to win, I frequently assemble groups of lawyers (and sometimes non-lawyers) at my office for workshops to reach higher quantum levels towards victory, and I have at numerous times done the same favor for other lawyers. 

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

Ram Dass has said that LSD gives a glimpse to what is ahead for those on a spiritual path. I will opt not to try LSD nor other illegal drugs, but remain fascinated about hallucinogens nonetheless, partly because of Ram Dass's experience with them, without which he never would have been booted out of Harvard, and, consequently, may never have met his life-altering guru Neem Karoli Baba (who named him Ram Dass) in India after sharing LSD with Babaji's disciple Bhagavan Das, and then would never have written his essential Be Here Now. Also importantly, I sometimes have clients who indulge in hallucinogens, and I need to be able to relate with my clients.

Magic/psilocybin mushrooms are another hallucinogenic source that has intrigued me in part because I have wondered how many of them are merely sprinkled with LSD rather than containing natural psilocybin. Regardless, a recent article about how psilocybin interacts with the brain says that results of the studies involved in the article "strongly imply that the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs are caused by decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's key connector hubs, enabling a state of unconstrained cognition." "Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin," Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (Dec. 20, 2011).

More on recent studies into hallucinogens is in this National Public Radio article. Here is an article from Science Daily on the above-referenced study.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

Four East Haven, Connecticut, police were federally indicted last week for systematically terrorizing Hispanics. The lengthy indictment is here, and follows two years after the filing of a pending federal civil rights lawsuit alleging mistreatment of Hispanics by the East Haven police department, and naming three of the four indicted police among the civil suit's defendants.

As criminal defendants, the indicted East Haven police officers are presumed innocent. Sadly, if the allegations are true, this is another key reason why I urge to drastically shrink the size of the criminal justice system in order to have a higher quality criminal justice system that is less expensive, and employs the best candidates, and properly trains and supervises them, and appropriately rewards strong performers. We best shrink the criminal justice system by legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and gambling; heavily decriminalizing all other drugs; eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing; eliminating per se rules in drunk driving cases; and eliminating the death penalty. 

I grew up just twenty-five miles down the road from East Haven, but never got off the highway to visit there. Before learning of the chilling allegations in this indictment, I associated East Haven with the city's Foxon Park soda that is served at the famous Pepe's Pizza in New Haven. With this indictment, soda pop is the farthest from my mind. 

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

Since when does reasonable articulable suspicion allow warrantless entry into one's home? Apparently when the cop runs in after the owner runs in after being asked about weapons therein. Ryburn v. Huff, __ U.S. _ (2012).

When my former law partner Jay Marks and I held a law firm opening party over thirteen years, on the guest list I added Sayuri and Santana Miyazaki, after previously speaking to Sayuri by phone, having been connected by our mutual friend Jun Yasuda.

This was the start of a few wonderful meetings over the years with this fascinating, optimistic and utterly peaceful couple. Sadly, today I learned rather late that thirteen months ago Santana passed away in his native Japan. I have no more details than that; Google points to little.  

Santana was a very talented and inspiring artist and human, painting bright and optimistic colors, including of his beloved Mount Rainier, Maryland (including here and here). I first learned of Santana's art when he brought a beautifully colorful postcard of his art to our party. His widow Sayuri is a poet, who brought me a pamphlet with some of her photos. I surmise that the art and poetry lost their way in one of my subsequent office moves.

Sayuri floored me in 2002 with her presentation of her poem "Enola Gay". As I recounted at the time, read first in the original Japanese, and written about six years earlier at the airplane's then site at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Sayuri's Japanese made clear to the speaker of any language her feelings and sadness and pain not just about the Enola Gay, but about war itself.

A few years ago, Santana and Sayuri returned to Japan, where they apparently stayed. Here, Sayuri sings a farewell song in Japanese to fellow Mount Rainier residents. To her left, seated, is Santana.

I agree with the concept that peace in the world begins with peace inside each of us. Santana already was peace when I first met him, and so is Sayuri. They very much inspire me to be on that path.

If anyone knows where I can reach Sayuri Miyazaki, please let me know. In the meantime, I will check with others who know her.

Thanking and bowing deeply to Santana Miyazaki.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

Last week, a New York trial judge suppressed the warrantless seizure of a suspect, and items found on him and in a video viewing booth, finding that one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in an adult video store viewing booth. Amen to that, and I mean it. New York v. Hemmings, 2012 NY Slip Op 22011 (Sup. Ct., N.Y. Cty., Jan. 12, 2012) (Pickholz, J.)

Thanks to the listserv member who alerted me to Hemmings. Congratulations to defendant Otis Hemmings for his suppression victory in this drug prosecution. Congratulations and thanks to Hemmings's Legal Aid Society lawyer James M. McQueeney.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

Thanks to the United States Justice Department -- which I am infinitely more often fond of verbally flogging than praising -- for filing in the Maryland federal trial court a position supporting the right of individuals to photograph and audiotape police activities occurring in public.

The Justice Department filed its Statement of Interest against the summary judgment motion filed by the Baltimore City police against a lawsuit arising from police detention on the street, and mistreatment of a man who recorded police carrying out their activities in public, going as far as to erase the recording that he had made. Sharp v. Baltimore City Police Dept., et al., Civ. No. 1:11-cv-02888-BEL (D.Md.).

Here are additional relevant filings in Sharp: the Complaint (which was removed from Baltimore City Circuit Court to the federal court on the defendants' motion); the defendants' dismissal motion; the plaintiff's opposition to dismissal; and the defendants' reply thereto.

Thanks to the listserv member who alerted me to the Sharp case, which addresses a critical issue in this day of repeated arrests, police harassment, and prosecution for public audiotaping of police.

 Bill of Rights (from the public domain)

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

The Internet does not need more censorship, whether the censorship arises here or abroad.

I have not had time to read the dozens of pages of the draft SOPA bill in the House and PIPA bill in the Senate, spurred by efforts to protect copyrights. (Then again, the television and film industry also opposed videocassette recorders in their infancy, crying copyright infringement, but later learned how lucrative is the repackaging and retail of their products.) I still know that I am a free expression zealot and always prefer erring on the side of too much than too little protection of free expression.

Now the SOPA bill apparently will be substantially amended to take into consideration the voices on the various sides of the issue.

Here are important sources of information on SOPA and PIPA:

- The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation should be reliable sources on SOPA and PIPA.

- The SOPA's present text and PIPA's present text.

- The Obama administration's position that "we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."

- The ACLU's online petition to fix SOPA.

Martin Luther King, Jr., presented his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech when I was just four months old. When he was shot dead on April 4, 1968, I was only five years and three days old, and he was only thirty-nine. He would have been eighty-two years old today.

I have been very positively influenced by the nonviolent path in fighting for social justice from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, How did they take up and stay on the nonviolent path? For both, their deeply-held religious beliefs helped them on that path. For Gandhi -- writes Radhika Rao --he was also influenced by the non-violence of his mother and of Tolstoy, and the civil disobedience message of Rousseau. Martin Luther King, Jr., was heavily influenced by Gandhi's non-violent path, starting with Mordecai Johnson's discussion of Gandhi. Ironically, hanging in King's office was a picture of Gandhi; both were assassinated.

On non-violence, King said:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate....
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

In overcoming violence, we have a very long way to go. Let us make the first step and the next step today on the non-violent path.

Happy birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr., and thanks many time over.

By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com  

NOTE: The following blog entry is adapted from my blog entry from 2010.

Virginia courts and state offices are closed both on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and the Friday before, which is [Robert E.] Lee-[Stonewall] Jackson Day.

Consequently, instead of the four-day weekend being a means of paying penance for Virginia's shameful centuries-long role with slavery and segregation right into the second half of the 1960's, here is the real story: 

Until 2000, Virginia set the same date for celebrating Lee-Jackson day and Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, until legislation passed to separate the two holidays with Lee-Jackson Day falling on the Friday before Martin Luther King Day. The Roanoke, Virginia, Times quotes a regional Virginia NAACP leader as follows on this peculiar holiday juxtaposition:

"The Rev. Glenn Orr, president of the Montgomery County-Radford City-Floyd County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said it's not a matter that members dwell on. 'We're really focused on honoring Dr. King rather than trying to tell somebody they can't honor Lee, Jackson,' Orr said. 'We just celebrate our opportunity to remember Dr. King and the values that he helped us to develop.'"

Having visited the Washington, D.C./Virginia area three times before starting law school here in 1986, I knew full well that I was going to the South, at least when crossing the border into Virginia. As with probably many others, I was drawn to Washington, D.C., with the possibility of getting involved in what was going on in the nation's capital. Ultimately, my resulting law practice is only relevant to the federal government for a small part of my law practice other than for my federal criminal defense work.  

Like Reverend Orr, this weekend I will do my best to focus on Dr. King, and to transcend my discomfort with the close juxtaposition of the Lee-Jackson Day celebration.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

On January 4, 2012, Maryland's highest court ruled, under Maryland law rather than under federal Constitutional law, that indigent criminal defendants are entitled to public defender assistance at initial bond reviews before court commissioners, which are held within hours of arrest, followed by a judicial review on the next business day if the defendant has not bonded out yet. DeWolfe v. Richmond, et al. , _ Md. _ (Jan. 4, 2012). The implications of DeWolfe are huge, including:

- Under DeWolfe, clearly public defender representation is now also mandated for indigent defendants at all bond hearings, which was not the case before DeWolfe except for in about three jurisdictions in Maryland.

- Where will the funds come from to make the Public Defender's Office able to provide effective assistance of counsel at bail proceedings before court commissioners and bail reviews on the first date in court?

- Will commissioners' offices now better accommodate private lawyers' ability to appear at commissioner bond reviews, versus my recent episode sitting in my car on a cold night, calling the commissioner every hour to remind her to let me know the time window for my client to be seen by her (and not getting a review until around 2:00 a.m.), seeing that the commissioner's office in that particular county had no waiting area for lawyers?

Here are a few additional thoughts on DeWolfe:

- DeWolfe addresses a prosecutorial "war room" near one commissioner's office, where prosecutors deliver ex parte communications to the commissioner. Commissioner proceedings for now on need to be recorded (they are not currently recorded), not allowing prosecutors to make ex parte communications.

- Appellant Paul DeWolfe is the chief public defender for Maryland. He is a class act, regardless of my views on his position in this litigation.

- The chief authors of an amicus brief supporting the appellees -- for amici including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- was drafted by Christina M. Gattuso, of the Washington, D.C. office of Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton LLP, and Gia L. Cincone of Kilpatrick’s San Francisco office. I met Chris Gattuso when I was a summer law clerk in the Regulations and Legislation division of the then-named Federal Home Loan Bank Board, where Chris then worked. I was pleasantly surprised that she took on this amicus task, including that she works at a law firm that does not list criminal defense among its practice areas.

By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com

If you want to be an unwilling actor in a Kafka novel, get yourself arrested; deprived of liberty for lengthy time in a police car, in a holding cell, and waiting for a bond review; get cut off from the world around you; and risk losing your job if you cannot get released right away, and find yourself without sufficient funds to hire a lawyer after paying the substantial bonds out there. The whole time, you are entitled to the Constitutional presumption of innocence; but if so, why does such a huge percentage of criminal defendants -- even for non-violent criminal charges -- languish in jail pending trial, including under statutes presuming no bond pending trial?

Police detention and jailing is a dehumanizing experience. As much as some might suggest that it is an ashram-type experience -- other than the loss of liberty -- at least in the nations that have more humane incarceration than the United States, in the United States it takes tremendous transcendence to overlook the metal toilets without seats, amenities worthy of a dungeon, and the body odor, flatus (a "symphony of flatulence" as a client described it), and refusal to bathe (by at least some) of inmates packed closely together. Then there it the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting. LIKE A WATER TORTURE.

The boredom, the boredom, the boredom, the boredom. The stench, the stench, the stench, the stench. Being moved from here to there, there to there, and here to nowhere in particular.  

Look at the jailers. Do they have it much better, other than that they get to go home at the end of their shift?

The foregoing provides some support for ending the dehumanization of arrestees and inmates, and to reverse America's huge rate of incarceration, and people under pretrial supervision, probation and parole. For those who do get caught in such a trap, I offer inspiration for transcending those problems here, here and here.