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

For my clients defending against drunk driving charges, I review their driving records. Most have a few points here or there against their license, a few have no adverse points, and the occasional client's driving record screams such a lead accelerator foot that I want to assure s/he is nowhere near me on the road before I hit the road. 

A good driving record can help, and certainly will not hurt, in trying to negotiate a desirable outcome in a DWI or other jailable traffic case, and in arguing one's case to the judge if convicted. Plenty of times, my clients rack up moving violation points by not going to court to contest the moving violation charge, and instead paying the ticket.

Yes, it is a time hassle to take off from work to go to court to see if the cop shows up, and to not know how to handle one's case without a lawyer. Paying a lawyer to defend a non-jailable moving violation may not always seem a good investment against still losing and paying the court fine and costs on top of the lawyer's fee, when compared to how much one's insurance rates will increase from the ticket and whether the driver is likely to have the points haunt him or her any more than that.

I get so few moving violation tickets against me, that I did not even realize until this month -- when my 60 in a 45 mile per hour speeding ticket hit the Virginia courts online docketing system -- that plenty of lawyers send direct mail offering their services to people charged even with non-jailable moving violations. I received at least ten such letters, and this is for a rather rural county over two hours from me. I stopped reading after the third letter, with all of them providing me a mix of warnings about the ticket's following me if paid and not contested, with some of the letters so generic that they were also geared towards those charged with jailable reckless driving (which required going at least five more miles per hour than I was clocked at), with all of them offering to go to court without needing my presence, and with one of them quoting a fee of $175. 

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 .

Dare to challenge a judge's evidentiary ruling, and s/he might growl: "I have already ruled, counsel. Move it along." The judge may not be growling only to directly address the lawyer's behavior, but  alsoto scare the lawyer's client so much that the client will beg the lawyer not to upset the judge too much.

Give into a judge's wrong and damaging evidentiary ruling, and risk irreparble damage.

With the foregoing in mind, recently I went to trial in a Virginia driving while intoxicate (DWI) case. I anticipated that our victory relied on convincing the judge that probable cause was absent to arrest our client, because failure to suppress seemed nearly inevitable for our client's blood alcohol content test to come into evidence, to be relied on by the judge as accurated, and to lead to a conviction for driving well over the 0.08 legal limit for blood alcohol level.

At the suppression hearing, the prosecutor presented the defense with a mixed bag of damning and redeeming evidence. Damning was my client's one-car accident leading his car to smash into an embankment, very recent alcohol drinking activity, and all six clues for the nystagmus test (with the trial judge incorrectly assessing the HGN results as very bad). Redeeming for us was that the ground was wet from recent rain, my client told the officer his car skidded on the wet road, he did great on the so-called standard field sobriety tests, other than the HGN,  and showing no clue other than stepping off the walk and turn line but once. Also helpful was that the judge sustained my objection to the officer's testifying from his notes, leading his testimony to be more watered down against my client than his actual police report. Hallelujah!

Murray Janus, from Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Around 1994, Murray Janus --1981-82 president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- stood up to speak for his portion of the NACDL's continuing legal education program in Washington, D.C. He spoke kindly and confidently, with an economy of words, with a southern accent, obtained from birth in his native Virginia in 1938.

Murray was a consummate gentleman who found a way to fight zealously for his clients while maintaining a graceful manner, without sacrificing his clients' interests in the process of his kindness. Murray impressed me for being able to effectively defend his clients without needing a big ego, and while maintaining a t'ai chi calm.

I last saw Murray around two years ago as I arrived at the Chesterfield, Virginia, courthouse as he was going to his car. Murray briefly and colorfully regaled me briefly with his morning's interesting experience in the courtroom, before going on his way.

Yesterday, Murray left his body. The well-deserved criminal defense lawyer listserv plaudits are already coming in. Murray lives on, including his influence on me to continue pursuing the path of calm and compassion while fighting zealously for my clients. 

I never asked how Murray felt about growing up and practicing law amidst Virginia's virulent Jim Crow, which continued when he was sworn into the Virginia bar in 1963, and which likely spilled over into bigotry towards Jewish people, and Murray was active in the Jewish community. I figured that he had transcended such artificial human-created barriers, and that he would have pointed out that virulent bigotry and the hope of eradicating it was not bordered at the Mason-Dixon line.  Murray was born in Virginia, and apparently stayed there all his life except for his college years in Dartmouth.

The first time I called Murray for his feedback on a Richmond judge at least a decade ago, he could not have been more gracious and generous and on the money with his time and thoughts and kindness.

When I first heard Murray talk, he spoke of a particular chief prosecutor as a class act. The same is what I think about Murray. 

Deeply thanking and bowing to Murray Janus.

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 .

How many people factor community in their choices of college and graduate school, jobs, cities to live in and homes to live in? We are challenged on a daily basis to transcend living a fragmented life to a life connected with others, with nature, and with all the elements around us. Daily life challenges us with substantial work hours and commutes, and limited time to attend to such basics as a doctor's visit, to spend quality time with ourselves/family/friends; and to provide ourselves sufficiently balanced nutrition and rest.

Meditation and mindfulness certainly help alleviate the foregoing challenges. So does benefiting from a supportive community of similarly-minded people.

I am deeply grateful to my many teachers who help me discover a better life path, both longterm teachers like Steve Rench, Jun Yasuda and SunWolf and many more; those who are my unintentional and unexpected teachers whom I bump into and interact with for but a brief moment; and all my teachers in between.

Tara Brach is a great teacher. When I first saw her at the BuddaFest's special weekend gathering for the tenth anniversary of the September 11 murders, she was looking at me and my family with a warm smile, as if she had already met us. My wife described her smile as that of an angel.

Subsequently, I have made the time -- along with a few hundred others, so arrive early -- on a few occasions to attend Tara's weekly meditation/dharma talk gatherings on Wednesday nights at the River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Bethesda, where I experience deep and great meditation, and learn some great lessons from Tara's Dharma talks and from those of her guests that sometimes fill in as leaders.

Tara wrote a book Radical Acceptance describing how her mindfulness practice, being in the moment, has tremendously helped her in dealing with otherwise deeply painful and distressing situations, including being supremely dissed before her cohorts by her previously revered teacher of years and years. Extreme ouch does not even begin to explain the hurt she felt from that. Today launches the release of Tara's new book True Refuge, which I understand includes underlining on focusing on the present moment as a counterpoint and healing approach to even the most difficult situations we encounter each day.

Tara kindly included me in her YouTube Finding True Refuge series, in which I am interviewed here. She generously posts her weekly dharma talks online for free. Of course, people cannot live on love alone, so I recommend also purchasing one or more of Tara's books, and attending her retreats and other sessions.

Whereas the Dalai Lama found serenity years ago amidst the turmoil inflicted in Tibet and worldwide, Tara has continued facing deep challenges -- even while an accomplished meditation and Dharma teacher, including challenges in dealing with her son and with her orthopedic problems that keep her from the many activities she so loves -- so shows us by example how mindfulness/being in the moment is tremendously beneficial for even the most extreme-seeming challenges.

Deeply thanking and bowing to Tara Brach.

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

 No Drones Walk around 2 miles from the White House, on Rhode Island Avenue. I am pictured at front. (Photo by Jules Orkin.)

Before Ram Dass visited India as Richard Alpert, the West apparently knew little about his now-famous guru Neem Karoli Baba, also known as Maharaji. Maharaji became famous once Ram Dass's essential Be Here Now hit the bookstands.

Before the Internet became ubiquitous, many fewer people than today knew about my peace mentor and friend Jun Yasuda, Jun-san remains an undersung hero, as she lives peace every minute, without a publicist, without writing articles, and usually without television cameras. If she had those, I have little doubt that she would be a superstar among millions.

I met Jun-san when I needed to. I was deeply opposed to Gulf War I as having been launched much too prematurely, if ever it should have been launched, in part when considering how much Kuwait's government-- Bush I's purported reason rather than oil for invading Iraq -- is not much of a human rights prize. Jun-san was praying and drumming for peace for thirty days during Gulf War I at Lafayette Park across from the White House, just two blocks from the law firm where I was working at the time. We met one day when I walked to Lafayette Park to escape the suffocation of feeling not free to discuss my views of Gulf War I at the firm in the midst of those there displaying yellow ribbons and yellow ribbon/Support-Our-Troops words, without offsetting those views with concerns about the massive death and wounding that was being inflicted beyond just American soldiers.

Before meeting Jun-san, I did not think about improving the world in terms of finding and cultivating peace within myself along the path. I was angry at Supreme Court justices who allowed executions, at law professors who kept closed-door policies when I was paying high tuition, at George Bush I for Gulf War I and more, at human rights violators worldwide, at judges too often holding indigent defendants pretrial with bonds too high for alleged petty offenses, and the list continued. I was angry. I confronted politicians in person and in writing to stop this and that trespass upon human rights and civil liberties, but did little to change my internal disharmony over the state of the world. If I wanted to become a better and more fulfilled person and lawyer, something had to change with me.

I later learned, just over a year ago, that Lama Surya Das, for instance, also found it insufficient to join anti-demonstrations without improving himself from within, and to find peace.

It took many years for me to get it that I needed to focus on my internal development first and foremost rather than obsessing over the world's injustices. Fortunately, I have met critical teachers who have been there at the right times on my path to getting it. A few months after meeting Jun Yasuda, I met the late trial lawyer Victor Crawford, who was brash, likeable and approachable, and seemed like anybody but a stereotypical taijiquan practitioner (as I later learned, many great taijiquan practitioners do not fit any stereotype), but he was, and I then started studying the martial art three years later and do my best to practice it daily and to apply it to everything I do.

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 .

In case I really needed to be reminded that I had come to the South to attend law school at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., all I needed to do was to drive along Lee Highway in Arlington, Virginia; go a little furthr south to see the stars and bars proudly displayed on various pickup trucks; or go to Richmond's avenue of statues of Confederate figures, with Arthur Ashe's statue added only later, and much farther down the avenue.

I passed the Mason-Dixon line after crossing into Maryland from Pennsylvania. Maryland has its own recent shameful past with blatant racial segregation. Then again, as we approach Martin Luther King, Jr., Day this Monday, although the world has made major strides towards less virulent and widespread racism, racism remains too virulent and too rampant in the Unitd States and beyond.

I chose to live where I live, and I am not going to avoid remnants of the Confederacy rearing their heads in Virginia and further south, unless I keep my head buried in the ground. Virginia is the place where a confederate soldier statue pointing his rifle greets visitors to the Loudoun County courthouse courtyard, where a skilfully engraved likeness of Robert E. Lee greets visitors to the Culpeper Circuit Court clerk's office, and where a couple named Loving had to go straight to the United States Supreme Court in the 1960's to reverse Virginia's criminal ban on intermarriage between black and white people.

Yesterday I was re-reminded of my geographical location when an amiable courthouse criminal clerk expressed her giddiness over the approaching Lee-Jackson Day, celebrated today, that always gives Virginia's state and local government employees a four-day weekend, when we add Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. I will treat today as a regular day, and will be in Maryland court as the Virginia courts close today and reopen next Tuesday.

Today in Virginia 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 with the close juxtaposition of the Lee-Jackson Day celebration. 

Times change. In the 1980's, Virginia elected an African-American governor, Douglas Wilder. Twice, a majority of voting Virginians voted for Barack Obama, our nation's first African-American president. Northern Virginia, for one, is in many ways a greater Washington, D.C., with transplants from all around the country and throughout the world.

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

In grade school. we usually started off the day with the pledge of allegiance and a patriotic song, including "America", "Yankee Doodle", "Grand Old Flag" and "America the Beautiful" (which song Pete Seeger liked very much and did a great version of during one of the American Folk Life festivals around the early 1990's). What justifies public schools promoting American patriotism like that, with the word "god" in the pledge and in so many patriotic songs, in stark contrast to the First Amendment's protection of free speech and silence and protection to exercise religion or not?

"Grand Old Flag" praises the United States as the land of the free and the brave. However, the United States is too much the land of the cops and the caged with our state of overcriminaliztion and over-incarceration.

The United States' inmate population does not seem to have gone down since Adam Liptak reported in the New York Times in 2008 that the United States incarcerates nearly one quarter of the world's prison population and the highest prison population rate per capita, even far surpassing China, that bastion of human rights abuses.

America's prison population is particularly huge as a result of lengthy incarceration -- often with draconian mandatory minimum prison sentences, and a huge percentage of defendants dropping like flies to plead guilty and snitch to reduce mandatory minimm exposure, rather than having their day in court leaving full the burden of proof on the prosecution -- of non-violent drug offenders. In the process, with incarceration costs in the tens of thousands of dollars per inmate per year, the prison system and the rest of the criminal justice system are dragging down our recovery from the recssion. Part of the solution, of course, is to drastically shrink the criminal justice system by legalizing marijuana, gambling and prostitution; heavily decriminalizing all other drugs; eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing; elminating per se drunk driving laws; and eliminathig the death penalthy.

What does the United States' huge prison pupulation say about any claim to America's being the land of the free and the brave, rather than the land of the cops and home of the caged, or the oppressed and enslaved?

The fight for social justice continues, and never ends.

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.

"What are my chances of winning or of no jail?" is a common question potential criminal defense and DWI clients ask me. When they come to me early on for Virginia cases, I have thin information on which to base my reply, although I do still reply. Police reports are not filed with the Virginia courts, other than brief narrative criminal complaints in DWI cases and various other cases -- often bare bones and sometimes more detailed than that -- and the potential client's version of events and his or her criminal court history may differ substantially from the police version and nationwide criminal case database (leaving the factfinder and judge to sort out what is accurate) regardless of who has supplied the more reliable information. Nevertheless, with my first meeting with a potential client, I usually have enough information to start addressing potential defenses, defense preparation and potential outcomes, underlining that I will have even more details to provide on defenses, defense preparation and potential outcomes as my work and investigation proceed, including when I learn what is in the police report(s) (which Virginia law does not entitle the defense to see), or, more succinctly, once I learn about my clients' alleged statements to law enforcement, exculpatory evidence (prosecutors often have a much narrower definition of exculpatory evidence than do I) and my client's criminal record, and any other information that I obtain independently from witnesses, police and prosecutors, on top of any additional information that police and prosecutors are willing to provide me.

When defending my clients for criminal cases, I take the following three-pronged approach to preparation: prepare for trial and pretrial battle, for settlement negotiations, and for possible sentencing. To do otherwise disserves the client.

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 10, 2013, Virginia's Supreme Court allowed trial judges to amend drunk driving/DWI charges to reckless driving, at least where the judge has not yet found guilt of DWI and where the defendant does not oppose the amendment. Kelley v. Stamos, __ Va. _ (Jan. 10, 2013).

Reckless driving is a double-edged sword in Virginia. On the downside, a reckless driving conviction can arise not only from driving recklessly but from driving twenty miles an hour or more over the speed limit or eighty miles an hour or more, and is a Class 1 misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail, up to a $2500 fine, and up to six months of suspended driving (with restricted driving privileges available). On the upside, for less serious DWI charges (e.g., with a low blood alcohol reading) or where the prosecutor is unsure whether s/he will win the DWI charge, Virginia prosecutors sometimes offer to amend DWI to a guilty plea or reckless driving, which looks better on one's record than DWI and eliminates the mandatory ignition interlock. Over time, some judges have been more willing than others, even, to amend DWI to reckless -- even without prosecutors concurring, as I obtained at the end of a DWI trial as explained here and without my request -- where the judge finds such an amendment to be merited, even though reckless driving is not a lesser included crime of DWI.

Last Thursday, Virginia's Supreme Court authorized trial judges to continue with the practice, if the judges so choose, to amend a DWI charge to reckless driving if they so choose, without kneeing the prosecutor's consent. In Kelley, the defendant entered a guilty plea before the General District Court judge, who continued the case disposition to the following month. The General District Court being a court not of record, with no recording device in the courtroom unless one or both parties arrange for it, the Supreme Court was not sure what precisely took place in the District Court, so relied on the documents in the case and the notations made on the case disposition sheet.

The prosecutor successfully sought an order from the next highest court, the Circuit Court, for the General District Court judge to change his disposition to DWI. Praised be Virginia's Supreme Court for reversing the Circuit Court, saying that trial judges are authorized on their own, without the prosecutor's consent, to amend criminal charges. Implicit in the ruling is that the defendant needs to consent to the amendment, and what defendant would not consent to amending DWI to reckless driving, everything else held equal?

ADDENDUM: As procedural curiosity, the foregoing Kelley case arose from the chief county prosecutor Theo Stamos's filing a lawsuit against the presiding General District Court Judge Thomas Kelley (before whom I have appeared many times) seeking a mandamus order from the Circuit Court. Kelley also addresses Judge Kelley's procedural challenges to the prosecutor's seeking mandamus relief. I am curious about whether the General District Court system paid the fee to have Judge Kelley represented by counsel in this case, who on appeal was Robert R. Musick of Richmond.

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 year, after about two decades I reestablished contact with a lawyer who worked at my first law firm and who started practicing law around seven years before I. We got together for lunch soon after and again a few days ago. Little did I know beforehand how much we had in common about finding meaning in our relatively short lives on this planet. When at that law firm, I did not open up to many colleagues about my personal and political views and yearnings, particularly after hearing a law partner and my supervising senior associate praise Bush I's invasion of Panama months during lunch together -- coupled with praising the "war on drugs" that I have long seen as a war on the Bill of Rights -- after I started there as an associate, and saw yellow ribbons there during Gulf War I without a counterbalance of expressed concern about a war entered much too prematurely by Bush -- and found refuge at lunchtime with the peace demonstrators at the nearby Lafayette Park. I threw up my hands about whether I would get anywhere productive talking politics and social justice with my law firm colleagues -- beyond the fact that I did express my interest in doing pro bono work with the firm.

Consequently, without telling my law firm colleagues, I reveled in attending my first conference of the National Organization of Marijuana Laws in 1990, where I shared my feelings of law firm isolation on such topics with some conference attendees; attended a pot freedom rally in Lafayette Park not long after; joined a friend in demonstrating against the Senate's authorizing Gulf War I; joined the second weekend march against Gulf War I; and took out a subscription to High Times in protest against a federal subpoena for the magazine's advertiser records, writing then-attorney general Dick Thornburgh that I had done so under such protest.

When I left the firm after two years to join the Maryland Public Defender's Office, I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that I had found the ultimate job where I could feel more comfortable being open with my colleagues about politics and social justice, but found no such enclave there for such discussions. Such like-minded people may have been there, but I did not find them -- maybe in part because I heard few people there speaking of such things that I agreed with, beyond our criminal defense work at hand, so did not seek them out -- although I found many who were truly devoted to providing top-flight service to indigent criminal defendants.

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.

Michelangelo's original David statue is in Florence, Italy, and numerous people told me after I left that it is a not-miss spectacle. I missed it, spending the first day walking with my friend around the city and seeing a mummy in another museum -- which was the bomb -- and the next day in nearby Pisa.

Michelagnelo's David and so many other artistic masterpieces depict people in their birthday suits. Why, after all, paint the clothing fashions/artwork developed by others? Then again, I almost lost my dinner when I opened the wrong door at one of my college's academic buildings while looking for the mountain club meeting, and instead happened upon an art class with a model in his birthday suit encircled by sketching art students. It seems that painting nude models is a common part of college art classes.

I have heard over the years about people eating Rocky Mountain oysters, a euphemism for cow's testicles. They are a common byproduct of beef farmers' castrating their bulls to tame them. For those wanting to eat meat without killing animals, perhaps Rocky Mountain oysters are an option, but that disgusts me gastronomically, and such castration is particularly unpleasant for the bull, and is part of the path to slaughtering the bull and its offspring for food and leather.

But I digress, other than to lead into the following connection between David, with his genitals hanging in full view, and the display of a bull's testicles.

If I hang an image of Michelangelo's David from the back of my car, will police stop my car and ticket me? No, so long as the image is not blocking my rear window.

If I hang a plastic duplicate of bull's testicles (called "bull n*ts" where they are sold), will I be stopped and ticketed? Possibly yes if I do that in South Carolina. In at least two recent instances, police in South Carolina have stopped and ticketed people displaying bull n*ts on the rear of their vehicles, under the state's obscene rear vehicle display law.

Praised be Virginia Tice for fighting back against this First Amendment/free expression violation, being stopped and ticketed for hanging plastic bull testicles from the rear of her vehicle, as Jonathan Turley reported in 2011. My Google search shows nohing by way of any court resolution of her case, other than that the case has been delayed three times as of last May 2012, whether or not her case still is ongoing.

One persons art is another's vulgarity, and vice versa. The First Amendment is not needed to protect expression that everyone likes, but to protect expressin that is vilified by many.