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Virginian-Pilot Quotes Jon Katz On First Amendment – Violative City Council Rule
Sticking a thumb in the eye of open and transparent government, democracy, and First Amendment protection, a majority of the Portsmouth, Virginia, city council took it upon itself, in haste all the worse, to add the following abomination to the city council rules of order...
Virginia Ct. App. okays limits on challenging identification of a robber
People misidentify others all the time. We think we see our best friend in the grocery store and realize it is a stranger. We meet a group of people and mistake two from the crowd for each other. We pay a store clerk at one moment...
Voice of America Afrique radio (French) interviews Jon about the rising U.S. murder rate
Interview of Jon Katz about the murder rate in the United States.
Fourth Circuit reverses conviction of pro se defendant, due to no sufficient waiver of counsel
Today, the United States Court of Appeals confirmed that said court has “never held that counsel can be relinquished by means short of waiver.” Consequently, the trial court’s finding of forfeiture of counsel by felony defendant Phillip Ductan’s uncooperative pretrial behavior during his criminal trial was...
Sifting intelligence gems out of police hollering
Recently, I asked a police officer a few very direct questions about his actions with my client. Had I asked the questions more gently, I may have gotten no less a beneficial result, but I asked them as I did. The officer got irritated. He...
Police suspects risk harmful misinterpretations of their non-verbal actions
George Lee Hawkins was stopped for a moving violation. Once stopped, the police saw a bulge in his shirt, and asked him if he could raise his “‘shirt up a little bit so [the police officer could] see how it sits.’” Hawkins then “extended his arms completely out to his sides...
The wind of a prosecutor’s condescending words
One day I was speaking with a taijiquan teacher about yelling people. He replied: “Why try to figure them out? It is just wind.” That advice is great for staying powerfully calm and unrattled in the face of someone exploding in an unjustified tirade. However,...
Winning a DWI trial by putting our own traffic stop witness on the stand
It is St. Patrick’s Day evening, and a police officer testifies at my client’s bench DWI trial that he stopped my military-enlisted client for blowing a traffic light that was solid red for my client at all times, with the officer driving a few car lengths behind...
Virginia- Police may not inventory-search cars with unfettered discretion
When police claim the accused possessed contraband, a key path of attack is to seek to suppress evidence of the seizure and search that turned up the alleged contraband. Praised be Virginia’s intermediate appellate court for recently overturning a contraband-bearing car inventory search, because: “[W]e...
I refer many clients to AA meetings. What happens there?
Because I have referred hundreds of clients to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings since 1991, I meant long ago to attend an AA meeting to see what my clients have to put up with, how much help AA might actually be, and what non-Christians, agnostics and atheists...