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CRIMINAL DEFENSE/ DWI /DUI DRUNK DRIVING DEFENSE LAWYER FOR FAIRFAX, NORTHERN VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, WASHINGTON, D.C. & BEYOND CONTACT JON KATZ, a highly-rated criminal defense attorney. Our above-displayed symbol underlines Jon's relentless focus on winning advocacy and total client service through mindful and skilled court preparation and battle. 301-495-7755, Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland 20910 / Virginia meeting locations: 703-917-6626, Tysons Corner, Fairfax County, Virginia 22102.
Sunday, September 30. 2012
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 relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com
On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries, including the following post that collects my last two weeks' thoughts beyond the law and government from my Twitter postings at @jonkatz5 and elsewhere. If ever I write a book(s), my blog's collected thoughts will come in handy.
BEYOND THE LAW AND GOVERNMENT
Peace activist Megan Rice's mother proclaimed -- in reference to her support of interracial marriage -- “I just can’t wait until everybody in the world is tan!” I met Sister Megan a few times at Jonah House while preparing for the Depleted Uranium Plowshares trial. Sister Megan currently lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington, D.C., pending the trial on her latest arrest, for breaching security barriers at a uranium storage facility with two other activists. That lax security was an invitation to catastrophe had the intruders had a violent agenda. Corporations offering mindfulness training: "Target, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Comcast, BASF, Bose and New Balance."
Pema Chodron was impressed with Obama's being "so present with each person, genuinely asking and kindly listening."
Congratulations to the law schools offering and supporting students in balance programs, including meditation.
John Coltrane reported ending his years-long heroin use cold turkey in 1957 with the support of his loved ones.
Leon Russell's "Jailhouse Now" lyrics.
University of Texas students risked lives by consuming alcohol through their other end. Did they know the risks?
TY for F. Scott Fitzgerald's letter on how so many revered creators were less widely lauded when alive.
Sunday, September 30. 2012
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 relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com
On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries, including the following post that collects my last two weeks' thoughts on the law and government from my Twitter postings at @jonkatz5 and elsewhere. If ever I write a book(s), my blog's collected thoughts will come in handy.
THE LAW WORLD
Some key Constitutional cases being orally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, which starts October 1.
Texas executes Cleve Foster as murder accomplice. The death penalty is barbaric, and Texas leads the way.
Passing of law school dean who countered racial segregation at U.Miss. Law School in the Sixties.
J. Matthew Guilfoil on cross examining police officers on field sobriety testing. Thanks to lawyer Charles Rowland for referencing NHTSA on the unreliability of bloodshot eyes in DWI cases.
D.C. Ct. App. reverses for violation of Defendant's Sixth Amendment Confrontation rights. Paul Luvera discusses David Clark on jury persuasion.
Continue reading "Random Thoughts I: Law and government. "
Friday, September 28. 2012
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 Day in and day out, the vast majority of prosecutors, police and judges whom I see seem to treat court cases in a routine fashion. I say "seem", because that is how it looks from observation, even when they continually recognize inside themselves the grave consequences that pretrial incarceration, pretrial limits on liberty short of incarceration (including a ban from leaving the state), the reputational damage of a criminal charge and conviction, and a conviction and sentence have on criminal defendants. For criminal defendants, their cases are far from routine.
Continue reading "Of police, prosecutors, judges and time machines. "
Thursday, September 27. 2012
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 WARNING- Unpleasant subject matter follows (as is the case with many discussions of ugly criminal allegations): An excessively large number of adults flirt with and solicit sex from minors. This retch-inducing truism often is rooted in their having stunted mentalities in childhood from physical abuse, sexual abuse, or mental abuse, thus giving them mentalites of children, as sexual beings in adult bodies still identifying sexually with other children. There is of course a difference between having such an interest and acting on that interest. Too many people do not control acting on the interest. In June 2012, I blogged about a Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion affirming a teacher's conviction for sexual abuse of a minor despite his not expressing any physical interest in the apparently willing minor student "victim" beyond kissing (apparently only fantasizing about but never doing the kissing, and never spending time alone together) and holding hands. Walker v. Maryland, __ Md. App. _ (June 28, 2012).
Continue reading "More on defending against charges of soliciting sex with minors. "
Wednesday, September 26. 2012
Our law firm is closed today, September 26, for Yom Kippur. We will
reopen September 27, when we will be fully staffed as always.
Tuesday, September 25. 2012
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 If I focus on everyone as being interconnected, will that blunt my fighting power in and out of court? On the one hand, by seeing everyone and everything as interconnected, we are more mindful before inflicting unintended and intended damage on others. Such an approach should reduce all the violence we see in the world. On the other hand, particularly when I see myself as being on the side of the angels -- which is the case with criminal defense and defending the First Amendment (which sums up 99% of my law practice) -- my approach is to harmonize my client's imbalanced situation with readiness to inflict damage on the opponent if necessary in the process. None other than television's Kung Fu underlines the foregoing approach to trial battle, through Master Kan: "Perceive the way of nature and no force of man can harm you. Do not meet a wave head on: avoid it. You do not have to stop force: it is easier to redirect it. Learn more ways to preserve rather than destroy. Avoid rather than check. Check rather than hurt. Hurt rather than maim. Maim rather than kill. For all life is precious nor can any be replaced." (Emphasis added). For me, approaching everyone and everything as being interconnected strengthens me as a person and trial lawyer, makes me feel less threatened by outside forces (which are not completely outside, since everything is interconnected), and makes me more persuasive when I am able to speak with compassion and empathy rather than with a level of disdain and hatred towards opposing witnesses and opposing lawyers that can quickly turn off the very judges and jurors (and prosecutors, when negotiating settlements and procedural points) whom I am trying to persuade. How to deal, then, with opposing witnesses during cross-examination when they act like runaway -- and sometimes underhanded -- trains? Such witnesses can be better de-fanged, neutralized, and turned around for my side's advantage by treating them -- as everyone -- with compassion, empathy, intuition and insight. No matter how dastardly the opposing witness comes across, s/he is motivated first and foremost by his or her feelings, including fear, anger, joy, exhilaration, discomfort and the list goes on. Who on earth enjoys being cross-examined on the witness stand? Certainly, in violent warfare, no soldier would want to stand in the middle of the battlefield flashing bells and whistles for the opponents to fire at the soldier. The cross-examined witness is exposed, being fired at with questions and unable to fire back in any way other than with his or her answers to questions. I advise my own witnesses to be as kind and focused with opposing cross-examining lawyers as they are with me on the witness stand. So much more easily said than done. My side's witnesses do not need to see me as a threat. How can they not see the opposing lawyer as a threat to their comfort, their reputation and self-respect, and (for my clients) their liberty?
Continue reading "Treating runaway witnesses with persuasive compassion. "
Monday, September 24. 2012
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 One of my criminal defense friends to whom I go first to refer co-defendants of my clients freely lists his cellphone number on his office's outgoing voicemail. I asked him how much of a burden this becomes, and he said it is usually a small burden. Maybe my friend is dealing with a different set of callers, cases and/or perspective. I hand out my cellnumber sparingly, automatically block my cellnumber from being read on caller ID (which sometimes leads to paranoid or stressed "who's this?" replies, and plenty who will not pick up a blocked number, so I sometimes ask my staff to call so our office number shows on caller ID), and have an outgoing cellphone voicemail asking people to contact me at my office phone or email instead of leaving a message if I did not ask them to call my cell. Messages to my office voicebox go straight to my pager, and emails go to my iPhone, which helps eliminate the need for many people to have my cellnumber. Of course I end up giving plenty of clients my cellnumber, to cut past phone tag, seeing that I am in court more than I am in my office during regular business hours. Plenty of people I call back intentionally keep their cellphone voiceboxes full, wanting instead to deal with responding to caller ID and texts; it is completely different from how I like to use my cellphone, but I need to be aware of how clients and potential clients are using theirs. Incoming cell calls to me are a real example of the challenges that trial lawyers have in keeping a positive balance in their work and private lives and in maintaining sensible boundaries with clients while still empathizing and caring about them, and being friendly with them as a default. In our cellphone culture of instant access, it seems that callers in general are quicker to start talking without asking if they are interrupting anything or if I have time for a lengthy talk, or maybe it is a sense of relief of finally reaching me after my unavailability while in court, and not wanting to lose a chance to talk about what has been on the caller's mind. From a practical standpoint, if I gave everyone my cellnumber, I would have a real challenge dialing outgoing calls on my cellphone, for instance, because that is thwarted when an incoming call is in the process. Incoming cell calls interrupt my handling such smartphone activities as calendaring, legal research and emailing. Many incoming calls are about matters my staff is there to handle, including scheduling meetings, getting documents to clients, coordinating with witnesses, and providing directions and other logistical information to courthouses. I want to give people and my driving my undivided attention; if I gave everyone my cellnumber, doing so would be a real challenge.
Continue reading "To take care of our clients, we must take care of ourselves as people and lawyers, as well. "
Thursday, September 20. 2012
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 Without sexual freedom, our other civil liberties are not sufficiently protected. Around two months before I started law school, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to permit states to continue criminalizing sodomy (oral sex and anal intercourse). Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). That effectively exposed millions of people to prosecution and conviction. Seventeen years later, the Supreme Court, ruling 6-3, barred criminalization of consensual adult sodomy. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). Little did I realize before starting law school that the Supreme Court would even get in the way of consensual oral sex. By the time I read Bowers, I realized that nothing is automatically sacred at the Supreme Court. My law practice primarily focuses on criminal defense. Just as my obsession with civil liberties protection heavily influences my choice to focus on criminal defense, it also heavily influences the many times I have defended sexual freedom in such First Amendment protection matters as fighting to keep open adult video stores and strip clubs and to eliminate and deflate laws that make it more onerous and expensive to operate such businesses. My criminal defense practice includes defending allegations of sex crimes. All criminal defense involves the defense of the Bill of Rights, which is the very essence of civil liberties.
Tuesday, September 18. 2012
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
The courthouses where I practice cost in the millions of dollars to build, with many probably costing much more than that. Countless are the courthouses lacking sufficient conference room space for me to speak privately with clients and witnesses in the thick of negotiations and during trial breaks. Those courthouses include Prince William, Loudoun, Alexandria (federal and state level), Prince George's (Maryland), the D.C. Superior Court, and the list goes on.
Even with courthouses that have conference rooms, their walls and doors are not airtight in keeping out sound. Many such rooms have no locks, and I even have experienced a prosecutor who had the audacity (or else lack of forethought, at the very least) to barge into the courthouse conference room where my client and I were conferring, telling me he "needed" to hear my response soon to his settlement offer.
Consequently, I tell my clients and witnesses that the courthouse walls and halls have ears, making it all the more important to discuss as much about the case as possible before the court date, which approach is also important for being prepared.
Nevertheless, courthouse conferences remain essential with clients on such matters as new settlement offers, new evidence provided by the prosecutor or prosecution witnesses, and new ideas and questions from me and my clients. When conference rooms are unavailable and time permits, I speak with clients outside (when the weather is nice, but outside is not safe from the media in high-profile cases, unless they are not monitoring the backdoor), in secluded areas of hallways on floors different from our courtroom, and even underneath stairwells.
Police and prosecutors swarm courthouses. I warn my clients that particularly in such courthouses as the D.C. Superior Court, prosecutors sometimes are sitting in the audience with everyone else, and not necessarily at the prosecutor's table (particularly seeing that prosecutors from both the U.S. Attorney's Office and D.C. Attorney General's Office are not going to be sharing a counsel table together). Police in plainclothes may also be sitting right behind us.
Continue reading "Beware: The walls and halls have ears. "
Monday, September 17. 2012
Our law firm is closed today, September 17, for Rosh Hashanah. We will reopen September 18, when we will be fully staffed as always.
Sunday, September 16. 2012
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 Court dates are often exercises in "hurry up and wait." My client and I are required to arrive on time, and I need to have our witnesses in court or on call to arrive before they will start testifying. Hurry up and wait is a fact of life, but is not necessary when the prosecutor knows s/he will not be ready for trial that day. Once the prosecutor knows this, I can tell my witnesses not to come to court, and tell my client that the need no longer exists to schedule a full day or more for the currently-scheduled trial.
Continue reading "Prosecutors and police: Please tell me right away when you will not be ready for trial. "
Sunday, September 16. 2012
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 relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com
On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries, including the following post that collects my week's random thoughts on the law world and beyond from my Twitter postings at @jonkatz5 and elsewhere.
THE LAW WORLD Va. Sup. Court affirms conviction, determining that admission of unconstitutional GPS car evidence was harmless error. D.C. Ct. App. says driving while suspended conviction does not require driver to know s/he was suspended at the time of the police stop. GOVERNMENT-RELATED ACTIONS Ed Markey calls for praise of Sister Megan Rice -- whom I met a few times starting 1999 -- for her peace break-in.
Continue reading "Random thoughts through September 18. "
Friday, September 14. 2012
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
Here is my challenge to you: Walk into any criminal trial courtroom in the United States, and tell me whether you see the absence of assembly line treatment of defendants.
Even the most well-meaning and kind-hearted judges must recognize that if they do not do something to "move the cases along", they and their fellow judges will face more of a crushing caseload around the corner than otherwise. Judges who do not care are all the more ready to treat the courtroom as an assembly line.
Not only is the criminal justice system so overgrown as to not be able consistently to deliver true justice, but civil cases also add to the courts' already overly-burdened criminal dockets. What to do? Possible solutions include:
- My true (but too undertried) solution to shrink the criminal justice system includes reducing the number of actions that are crimes in the first place; legalizing marijuana, prostitution and gambling; heavily decriminalizing all other drugs; eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing and the death penalty; and eliminating drunk driving per se rules.
Continue reading "Can trial courts transcend assembly-lining without first shrinking the criminal justice system? "
Thursday, September 13. 2012
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer, drug defense lawyer, marijuana 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
Image from public domain.
Thanks to Seventh Circuit Reagan-appointed appellate Judge Richard Posner for publicly supporting marijuana legalization. At minute 54 in this YouTube video from September 6, 2012, Judge Posner says: “'I don’t think we should have a fraction of the drug laws that we have. I think it’s really absurd to be criminalizing possession or use or distribution of marijuana... I can’t see any difference between that and cigarettes.'” In his speech at Elmhurst College, Judge Posner also wonders whether cocaine is as dangerous as many think. He says LSD is dangerous, but is skeptical about whether it makes people jump out windows. Further on the use of all drugs, Judge Posner says: “'But also I’m skeptical about the other drug laws... The notion of using the criminal law as the primary means of dealing with a problem of addiction, of misuse, of ingesting dangerous drugs — I don’t think that’s sensible at all.'”
Wednesday, September 12. 2012
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 Clients seek different levels of aggression from their lawyers. A handful express discomfort and disagreement when I kibbitz amicably with proecutors and cops. I tell them that I will do nothing to try to harm their case, and that my being kind and compassionate to all, including opponents, they are more likely to be open to listening to me, rather than being distracted by fear that i will stab them in the back. Ideally, this is like the pool shark smiling all the way to victory, even when the opponent moves the balls when the shark's back is turned. (Therefore, never turn your back to your opponent, keep the opponent within arm's length, but do not be paranoid.) I can remind clients that all people are connected, that we therefore should be compassionate and empathetic to all (and kind usually), but that we should also remember that humans can be rotten and try to throw sand in our faces. So we need to remain on guard in a powerfully relaxed way, not in a weakly stiff nor collapsed/off guard way. ' It is possible and adviseable to find things to like in opponents and everyone, no matter how much we disagree with their opinions and actions. The more we find such thngs to like, the more content and powerful we are, and the more persuasive we are. One client hired me for his criminal defense in a county over two hours from my office, apparently interested in hiring a lawyer who felt no trepidation about serving the client's interests alone, rather than trying to keep in the prosecutors' good graces. When we did not make much progress with settlement negotiations in this case with some ugly allegations, my client told me his concern that perhaps a lawyer seeming to be less high-powered than I might be better for negotiating. That whole scenario was interesting, starting with the reality that I tell all potential clients looking to hire a lawyer who is not "tied to the local old boy network" that it is not necessary to seek an out-of-town lawyer.
A native New Yorker potential criminal defense client once walked into my office, and we identified with each other immediately, possibly in part because he could see that I can identify with the New York state of mind in this south-of-Mason-Dixon place, including after my having grown up sixty miles up the road from Manhattan and having lived and worked there a year before law school.
This client was a teddy bear inside a big grizzly bear body and persona, who implored me a few days before trial: "Are you gonna piss 'em off? Don't piss 'em off!" If he thought there was something in my swagger or otherwise that tends to piss off people, why did this man hire me in the first place? I ended up getting him a phenomenal settlement for a non-jailable moving violation, where originally he was being prosecuted for a jailable misdemeanors, at all times displaying total calm to the prosecutor.
Continue reading "To piss off prosecutors and judges or not. That is the question. "
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