Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

I loved my first tie-dye shirt. I wore it proudly at my summer day camp and beyond during the 1971 summer before third grade. I guess I had not read the t-shirt closely enough before, in response to my annoying a camp counselor about his...

Criminal defense work does not suit just anyone. Those who thrive on being part of the “in-crowd” since high school on up, right to college fraternities and to country clubs, might feel like fish out of water doing criminal defense. Former prosecutors, former cops, and...

A while back, a prosecutor interrupted my argument — as many prosecutors have a penchant to do — near the very beginning of the hearing that I had scheduled on my own motion. I let my irritation get the better of me  — with irritation...

During the Vietnam War, the United States government drafted a slew of people not long past high school age who were ill-prepared to go to war. Plenty had little real-world experience. Plenty had never been on a plane, let alone one to halfway around the world. Plenty...

Repeatedly in my initial discussions with them, clients and witnesses recount the events leading to my client’s arrest not only with descriptive words but with conclusions, opinions, and the occasional (usually with younger witnesses, which seems to be a generational way of speaking) "so I was...

Virginia legal practice is full of formality, starting with the overformality of requiring bar exam takers to wear courtroom attire, offset by requiring shoe soles that do not go clippity-clop on floors, thus permitting the silly clash of athletic shoes against dark suits. How does...

Why do so many people freak about public human nudity, about letting it all hang out, when nobody freaks out that all other animals walk around nude? The human lack of fur does not answer the question, because I can spot a male elephant from...

Our tax dollars pay prosecutors and police to serve the people, including those they arrest and prosecute, not just to serve the amorphous “people that I — the cop or prosecutor — am here to protect.” How many police, prosecutors and other civil servants see...

When my clients get arrested for drunk driving in Virginia, sometimes I mention how much better they would have fared in Maryland, which has no mandatory minimum jail sentencing for first-time driving while intoxicated (DWI) defendants, less harsh sanctions than Virginia on driving for first-time...

At trial, cross-examining a runaway police officer can be dangerous. Ask the officer whether the alleged criminal incident was recorded by audio and/or video, and s/he might reply: “Recording was not necessary, seeing that officer A saw the defendant sell cocaine to a pedestrian, officer B...