Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Praised be the judges who speak out against the drug war. Senior federal trial Judge Mark W. Bennett (N.D. Ia.) publicly admits feeling "greatly conflicted about my role in the 'war on drugs.'" (See also here.) Fourth Circuit senior Judge Andre Davis Jon Katz,...

Ermias Samson stands convicted of felonious possession with intent to sell marijuana under Virginia Code§ 18.2-248.1(a)(2), after his trial lawyer unsuccessfully sought to introduce into evidence the certificate of analysis from Virginia's Department of Forensic Science showing that it was not Samson's fingerprints on...

In 2014, I though I had died and gone to heaven, when the Virginia Supreme Court seemed clearly enough to authorize trial courts -- after a finding of guilt but before conviction -- to amend the guilty count to a lesser offense or even to...

Praised be the Virginia Court of Appeals's May 2, 2017, decision reversing a robbery conviction that rose or fell on DNA found on items that a masked knife-armed robber discarded near the scene of a gas station robbery. It turned out that others also left...

One 2014 day when I entered a nearby courthouse, a sheriff's deputy lamented the backlash of public opinion against police after police shot dead Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The unjustified police killings continued, including Eric Garner's death on Staten Island following a police chokehold,...

Praised be Justice Stephen Breyer, apparently the United States Supreme Court's strongest skeptic on the death penalty's Constiutionality, who emphasized on April 24, 2017: "What legitimate purpose does it serve to hold any human being in solitary confinement for 40 years awaiting execution? What does...

Most crimes cannot be proven merely by committing the act -- known as actus reus -- but also require proof of criminal intent, known as mens rea. Generally, one of four levels of mens rea is required before a conviction may be obtained, namely purposeful,...

In 1991, I was still yearning to re-direct my career from the 25-lawyer corporate law firm that I had joined two years later, to something more meaningful. Ever since finishing law school, I went out of my way to meet birds of a professional and...

Nearly two generations of Americans, born since 1980, knows of no life other than that under the drug wars spurred during the Reagan administration, complete with metal detectors and other intrusive searches in schools without particularized suspicion; draconian drug sentencing regimes involving lengthy mandatory minimum...

Plenty of probation agents and sentencing judges may have a penchant for barring access to the Internet for certain convicted sex offenders, in such cases as sexual assault and child pornography. However, doing so in a knee-jerk fashion and without narrow tailoring violates a convicted...