Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
Fairfax Criminal Lawyer / Virginia DUI Attorney- Highly-Rated
Pursuing Your Best Defense Since 1991
Getting to the place where the client is, from the power of zero
For me to truly help my client, I need to shed my lawyer’s cloak, keep and enhance my humanity, and find the place where my client is, so that we may move forward together. A criminal defense colleague of mine told a great true story...
Reconnecting with NACDL members after 13 years
Today through this Saturday is a golden opportunity for area criminal defense lawyers to attend the Washington, D.C., quarterly CLE conference of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which last had a quarterly conference in this area in 1999. The continuing legal education program is...
Of prosecutors, power, high horses, and the magic mirror
In all state-level courthouses where I practice, prosecutors take over a table in the courtroom well within feet of the judge, unless a jury trial is scheduled there. Depending on the courthouse, judge and circumstances, a criminal defense lawyer who tries entering the well before...
Don’t let prosecutors rejoice over divisive competition among criminal defense lawyers
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”- Ben Franklin. Prosecutors’ offices likely share with each other on email listservs and at conferences to help make each other better prosecutors. Plenty of criminal defense lawyers do the same, and...
Meeting the pressure to convert a DWI charge to a DREAM Act-friendly result
The DREAM Act is still a dream, to bypass immigration law penalties against those who came to the United States as children. Praised be the Obama Administration for having directed the use of prosecutorial discretion (see the June 15, 2012, Homeland Security Department directive, with...
A blue uniform makes one no more likely to tell the truth (and more likely to lie?)
When I remind judges that the law does not cloak police with any more credibility than a civilian, they readily agree with me. However, in reality, a huge percentage of judges seem to assign a higher level of credibility to police. It is exasperating to...
In Virginia, the handgun is legal when segregated by a closed glove compartment
Image from the Government Printing Office’s website. Spend enough time around Virginia Circuit Court clerk office windows, and you will hear the stream of applicants for concealed carry handgun permits. Many parts of Virginia and other parts of the South greet visitors and locals with particularly kind words...
Winning at trial after a would-be damaging ruling
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...
Sentencing in Virginia – Be Ready for Showtime
“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...
Giving a cop the finger does not justify a stop nor arrest. (I am not pulling your finger — I mean leg — either.)
The middle finger never needs to be extended towards anyone. We have enough other fingers to gesture and point. Giving the finger is divisive in a world where we are all connected, and where the negative energy of giving the finger comes back to us...