Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

All battles have hurdles. For Virginia drunk driving defense, last December the state’s intermediate appellate court threw a King Kong-sized hurdle for challenging the accuracy of the breathalyzer machines, in the form of Fitzgerald v. Com, 61 Va. App. 279, 734 S.E.2d 708 (2012). Fitzgerald does...

In criminal law, “three strikes and you’re out” refers to severe mandatory minimum jail sentencing, and not baseball, other than that mandatory minimum sentencing, for the defendant, can feel like being slammed on the skull with a baseball bat and smashed in the eye with a high-speed...

I once got a glimpse of how clients feel trusting me to fight for them when I frantically called for help to a former client who became my contractor, to fix what became a temporary burp in an important part of my firm’s administrative/technological operations. I have ended...

Soft is not weak when applied in terms of active relaxation. Collapsed is weak. Brittle is weak. Stiff is weak. Softness enables listening and winning; loudness deafens; hardness makes brittle and weak. Softness puts opponents and others more at ease — and open to the...

A drug dog’s positive alert, by itself, does not justify searching a car’s passengers, where the police have no particularized suspicion to believe that the passenger possesses drugs or is acting criminally together with the others in the car. Whtehead v. Virginia, 278 Va. 300,...

Praised be my clients — amounting to the vast majority of them — who do not rush to plead guilty in an effort to avoid worse sentencing exposure in the event of a trial loss, than from pleading guilty. By the time my clients and...

On April 17, 2013, the Supreme Court issued a splintered opinion in which a 5-4 majority ruled that nonconsensual blood draws ordinarily require a search warrant in driving while intoxicated investigations and arrests. Missouri v. McNeely, ___ U.S. ___ (April 17, 2013). McNeely says that...

By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. Earlier this week, Briton Sean Jude Kelly’s allegedly drunken and “let’s fight” behavior on a plane returning...

What is it like for a doctor handling a life-or-death emergency when the patients’ relatives are pleading, even screaming "Doctor, do something!" "Doctor, what is my relative’s situation?" "Doctor, why are you not doing a better job?" As a criminal defense lawyer, I also face...

A recent Virginia appellate opinion reminds us what we already know: Being human, judges can make serious mistakes. Parties’ lawyers, must be at the ready to prevent and remedy those mistakes. Latasha Gordon was convicted at trial for two counts of unlawful wounding (each count...