It is a pain enough to receive a federal DWI conviction than also having to come to state court to seek restricted Virginia driving privileges. Unfortunately, Virginia statutory law requires a revocation of Virginia driving privileges (or revocation of all driving privileges for Virginia licensees)...
Alexander Michael Edwards in 2016 was convicted in Campbell County, Virginia, Circuit Court for malicious wounding for the non-consensual tattooing of two minors, and for conspiring to murder them to avoid their testimony against him at trial. The elements of malicious wounding under the Virginia...
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution limits police authority to stop, seize, and search people and their property. Sadly, the United States Supreme Court over the decades has limited the strength of the Fourth Amendment in numerous ways, including the horrendous Terry v....
A Virginia DWI arrestee has a tough decision between agreeing to submit to a breath or blood alcohol test, thereby making the police officer's and prosecutor's job easier to obtain a DWI conviction for a proven breath or blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08 or...
Being a judge is a privilege with awesome responsibility and power. Once a judge stops seeing judging as a privilege, it is time for the judge to hang up the judicial robes. Judging can be exhausting work. The criminal and civil lawsuits do not stop...
Virginia is far behind the medical marijuana states that have made marijuana possession and use lawful for numerous medical ailments. Virginia law limits legal marijuana medicinal use (only in the form of cannabidiol oil ("CBD oil") and THC-A oil) to epilepsy, and pursuant to a...
Using police drug sniffing dogs is fraught with unreliability. as further addressed here, here, and here. Despite this unreliability, Virginia law poses substantial hurdles to a criminal defendant's obtaining by a records subpoena data about the training and performance of the case's drug dog. Fortunately...
What should a person do when a police officer orders the suspect to hand the cop an item (other than ordering a driver to hand over one's driver's license and registration) or to empty one's pockets? If complied with, that order amounts to a search...
Any president would have felt in a bind after the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria on its own civilians -- apparently at Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's own order -- between seeming indecisive at not launching a quick and decisive military response, and having that...
In 2004, the United States Supreme Court bitterly divided 5-4 (with a plurality of three justices and a concurrence of two more justices) in declining to apply the Exclusionary Rule to evidence obtained by police through voluntary but un-Mirandized admissions about the location of contraband....
Yesterday, the Virginia Court of Appeals confirmed that a parent transporting a child while under the influence of alcohol is not automatically in violation of the felony child endangerment statute, Va. Code § 18.2-371.1(B)(1). Instead: "Policing the line between the ever present 'possibility' of serious...
Virginia District Court criminal defendant's appeal deadline is within ten calendar days of his October 25 sentencing, and an appeal is not precluded by a guilty nor no contest plea. Va. Code §§ 16.1-132 and 16.1-296. In Virginia, misdemeanors (offenses jailable for no more...
The horizontal gaze nystagmus test ("HGN") is routinely included among the field sobriety tests. Even if the test's name sounds scientific, in reality the test involve's the police officer having the DWI suspect follow a pen or other stimulus with the suspects' eyes, while the...
How do we reverse the Nation's oppressive police state of affairs? As I have blogged for over a decade, we start by shrinking the overgrown criminal justice system, starting with steps as simple as legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and gambling; heavily decriminalizing all other drugs; eliminating...
My criminal defense work is about harmonizing and reversing difficult situations and liberating my clients, from their charges, sometimes from themselves, from their risks, and from their potential and actual incarceration. Once we decline to let others upset or annoy us -- ranging from people...
During each year's United States Supreme Court term, I try to attend a morning oral argument session, which typically is on a date that got continued or resolved for one of my own court dates. Today, I hit the jackpot by hearing two particularly important...
Virginia law makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to engage in simulated masturbation in public. You read that right: "Va. Code § 18.2-387.1 Any person who, while in any public place where others are present, intending that he be seen by others, intentionally and obscenely...
In 1991, the Virginia Court of Appeals rejected First Amendment arguments against the Commonwealth's statute --Va. Code § 18.2-422 -- barring mask wearing intended to conceal one's identity. Hernandez v. Virginia, 12 Va.App. 669 (1991). The anti-mask statute apparently was focused against Ku Klux...
Over four years ago, I blogged about the truism that the courthouse walls and halls have ears. The courthouse hallways are swarming with police in plain clothes, prosecutors and judges dressed similarly to defense lawyers, news media reporters, and other criminal defendants and their supporters...
Mere momentary, short and limited weaving is not sufficient for a police traffic stop. Moreover, Virginia has not recognized a community caretaking ground to allow a police traffic stop (to assure the welfare of the driver of a car driving less than perfectly). Barrett, 250...
