Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Plea negotiations -- better called settlement negotiations, because a dismissal is a better settlement than a negotiated conviction -- are a stark reality of criminal defense. As a Fairfax criminal and DUI lawyer, I know that attorneys who do not want to engage in...

Restorative justice (RJ) is an alternative dispute resolution approach that enables criminal cases to be resolved without convictions (and sometimes without even having formal court charges). As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that with RJ the alleged victim and accused (the accused needs the...

The criminal defense needs to be ready to raise and attack the following circumstances in prosecutions for possession to distribute drugs: Weight: Significant weight of the alleged drugs by itself does not constitute intent to distribute. For instance, when a medicinal user of marijuana finds...

Failure to register and re-register as a sex offender is a jailable offense in Virginia, whose statutory law requires such registration for those convicted of murder and such sexual offenses as sexually violent offenses, carnal knowledge with a child of thirteen to fifteen years old,...

Secondary traffic offenses in Virginia are traffic violations that expressly do not permit the issuance of a traffic citation, summons or ticket unless in conjunction with a primary offense, which is a violation of one of more other traffic or criminal laws of the commonwealth....

Special need is sometimes used by police to try to justify stopping people when they do not have probable cause nor individualized reasonable articulable suspicion to stop, frisk or search a person for evidence of criminal activity. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I am disheartened...

Convincing people starts from engaging them as human to human. As a Virginia criminal lawyer, I know that this engagement is not solely directed at their minds, but at their levels at the gut, heart , and feelings -- their feelings of inspiration from the...

Voir dire -- French for "to speak the truth" -- is the phase for Virginia lawyers to ask questions of the potential jurors / venire members, to assist in seeking to strike potential jurors for cause, seeking to rehabilitate them from being stricken for...

Drug cases (marijuana and non-marijuana) are among the most common non-traffic / non-DUI prosecutions on Virginia criminal court dockets. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I have defended hundreds of such cases, and provide some insights herein on such defense.

Declining requested breath or blood testing in a Virginia DUI case does not automatically mean that the DWI defendant will avoid blood alcohol content (BAC) evidence from being obtained. Very frequently where I practice as a Fairfax criminal lawyer, police are obtaining search warrants to...