Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
Fairfax Criminal Lawyer / Virginia DUI Attorney- Highly-Rated
Pursuing Your Best Defense Since 1991
What Keeps a Lawyer Practicing Law?
What keeps me practicing law, and enjoying it? Law school was not sufficient to keep me practicing law and enjoying it, with the exception that I benefited tremendously spiritually, intellectually, and growth-wise from the immigration law clinic, through which I first-chaired the first two trials of...
When release is conditioned on drugging
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) More commonly when I was a public defender lawyer, from time to time I would have clients who were at great risk of being ordered by the judge for a psychological evaluation — e.g., for being seriously delusional, and, therefore,...
More on defending drunk driving in Virginia
Image from Virginia Forestry Dept’s website. In Virginia and Washington, D.C., the law says that drivers in those states impliedly consent to have their blood alcohol levels tested if the police have sufficient grounds for seeking such tests. In that regard, here are important relevant Virginia...
Where to Check Speedometer Calibration
Here are some Northern Virginia businesses that have been reported to me as providing speedometer calibration checks. I tend to recommend such checks for clients accused of jailable reckless driving based on excessive speed. This list is a few years old at the time of...
Maintaining calm in the eye of the storm
Some people seek calm by avoiding conflict. I seek to use calmness to harmonize conflict to the advantage of me and my client. By applying the principles of t’ai chi to my practice as a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I do my best neither to chase...
Defending criminal copyright infringement cases
Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory’s website). According to a posting at lawyer Allan Ellis’s website, the United States Sentencing Commission reports that 94% of federal criminal cases result in guilty pleas. This week, my client and I bucked that trend by proceeding...
Does the First Amendment prohibit convictions for juxtaposing lawful images of children with adult sexual images?
Bill of Rights (From public domain.) NOTE: The following blog entry was written before the awful May 19 Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Williams (May 19, 2008). This blog entry follows up on my previous discussions of child pornography defense here and here. With the current...
The risks of refusing a test that should be fully refusable
Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Field sobriety tests are junk science administered by cops who have no expertise to administer them, because junk science precludes having expertise. See how poorly is the performance when asking even a fully sober and awake person to follow unfamiliar instructions...
When a Jailer Suffers the Justice System’s Injustices / How Prepared Should a Prosecutor Be?
When I started practicing criminal defense, I spoke with a very experienced criminal defense lawyer who told me that he had never prosecuted, but expected he would love it if he had such a job; this was a variation on a theme of some former...
In praise of Ernie Lewis
Every criminal defense lawyer should attend the National Criminal Defense College’s Trial Practice Institute, known in shorthand as Macon for the program’s location. At least when I attended in 1994, competition for each Macon slot was very high among state-level public defender lawyers. The program sough diversity...