Advocacy with power is essential for your Virginia defense is essential, says Fairfax criminal lawyer

Advocacy with tirelessness and power is essential for your Virginia defense. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, again and again the proof is in the pudding with my ability to turn around the prosecutor / assistant commonwealth’s attorney and judge in my client’s favor. None of this persuasion is going to take place with wishful thinking, hard work with no effective strategy and plan, and not seeing and acting on the big picture. Patience is also often necessary. As to patience, consider that it has taken twenty two years for the Virginia Court of Appeals to finally reverse its 2002 three-judge panel precedent that permitted a prior juvenile felony adjudication of culpability to be a precedent for a harsh mandatory minimum sentence for unlawful possession of a firearm. Jennings v. Commonwealth of Virginia, ___ Va. App. ___, 2024 WL 4940509 (Dec. 3, 2024). Jennings gets right to the heart of Virginia Code § 18.2-308.2 to recognize that only relevant adult convictions trigger mandatory minimum sentencing for unlawful firearm possession, and that a finding of criminal culpability in juvenile court is an adjudication and not a conviction that would trigger such mandatory minimum sentencing. 

Is it okay for my Virginia criminal defense lawyer not to thoroughly enough read and analyze the criminal statute under which I am being charged?

As exciting as advocacy in court may be, plenty of the essential potentially winning work in your defense takes place during your Virginia criminal defense lawyer’s solitary time fully reviewing and analyzing the statutes, court cases and other law sources that materially impact your case, on top of fully digesting, understanding and analyzing the evidence and discovery in your case. This reminds me of a major impactful philanthropist who sees no substitute for his personally reviewing plenty of data that is dry in the abstract, but which also is a springboard to immensely improving others’ lives.

Retain the best possible Virginia trial lawyer and appellate lawyer to pursue your advocacy

Ask your potential Fairfax criminal lawyer / Virginia attorney what their trial experience and accomplishments are, not merely whether they do such defense. I have heard lawyers tell me their concern about trials eating up their precious time. Trials and complete trial readiness and ability are key reasons that I do criminal defense work in the first place. If your potential Virginia criminal lawyer shies away from taking cases to trial, this is a vital matter not to overlook. Virginia appellate criminal defense requires various skills and ability beyond what is needed in trial court, but I look at appellate defense as integrating what we criminal defense lawyers know and experience from our trial court work, and integrating that into our appellate work. Appellate work requires the discipline of obtaining the essential portions of the trial record, fully knowing the essential parts of the trial record, fully analyzing the evidence and applicable law, and written and oral advocacy not only persuasively with the ideas presented, but with a writing style that makes the reader want to keep reading, and that engenders the reader’s retaining and understanding essential information and ideas that the defense wants to be retained and understood. Talk about patience and doggedness. Jennings’s lawyers got the unfavorable Virginia Court of Appeals precedent (allowing a juvenile adjudication of culpability to trigger mandatory minimum sentencing for firearm possession) to be invalidated twenty-two years after the fact. Jennings (invalidating Carter v. Commonwealth, 38 Va. App. 116 (2002)).

Why is it so hard to invalidate bad Virginia Court of Appeals decisions?

We Virginia criminal defense lawyers need to be ready to give our ideas (when asked) to colleagues for their advocacy for the defense side before the Virginia Court of Appeals, for many reasons, including banding together in pursuing justice, and to avoid the making of bad caselaw that might haunt Virginia criminal defendants for years or even decades to come. “The interpanel-accord doctrine provides that a decision of a prior panel of this Court [the Virginia Court of Appeals] ‘”becomes a predicate for application of the doctrine of stare decisis’ and cannot be overruled except by the Court of Appeals sitting en banc or by the Virginia Supreme Court.'” Jennings (citations omitted). Virginia Court of Appeals decisions are usually reached by a three-judge panel. That panel’s published decision will become virtually undisturbable unless disturbed on appeal to the commonwealth’s Supreme Court or unless invalidated through arguing to the entire Virginia Court of Appeals (also known as en banc). The Court of Appeals is only going to grant en banc review in a limited number of court cases, lest the court’s work to veer towards grinding to a halt.

Top-rated Virginia criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz relentlessly pursues your best defense against Virginia felony, misdemeanor and DUI prosecutions. Don’t get caught unprepared nor underprepared in court. Secure your free in-person confidential initial consultation with Jon Katz about your court-pending prosecution. Call / contact us at 703-383-1100, info@BeatTheProsecution.com and (text) 571-406-7268.