Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
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When the prosecutor’s case does not fit the jurors’ script
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Jurors give scripts to themes, e.g. armed robbery. If prosecution evidence does not fit with the jurors’ scripts — for instance, if the armed robbery defendant looks like a computer nerd who would not and could...
Unrepresented criminal defendants: Beware
What is the meaning of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel — and the Fifth and Fourtheenth Amendment right to due process — if prosecutors communicate directly with unrepresented criminal defendants soon after their arrests, to start the clock on short court...
False confessions by juveniles are frequent
False confessions by juveniles are more frequent than by adults, as confirmed in this video. Of course, false confessions run rampant across age lines. In particular, see the last 90 seconds of the video, highlighting a sample of juveniles convicted but ultimately exonerated, sometimes more...
Virginia: Defendant entitled to new sentencing hearing after the jury recommended an illegally high sentence
In Virginia, the jury decides guilt-innocence, and recommends a sentence in the event of a conviction. Jerome Rawls was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the jury’s recommendation, for second degree murder. At the time of sentencing, Rawls’s lawyer, the prosecutor, and the trial judge...
Did Clarence Darrow distract a jury with a long ash?
Years ago, I heard a story that a lawyer — possibly Clarence Darrow — distracted a jury from the opponent’s argument, impressed that Darrow could create a very long ash with his cigarette or cigar, in the days that smoking was allowed in courtrooms. Recently,...
September 21: Jon Katz speaks on “Know Your Rights” panel
Support FlexYourRights, (Jon Katz serves on its Board of Advisors.) On Monday, 7:00 p.m., September 21, I will be returning for a third time to the University of Maryland to spread the gospel of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to refuse searches and seizures...
When immunity trumps the Fifth Amendment
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, in part, that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” However, over thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that witnesses can be compelled to give immunized testimony even...
First Amendment Protects the Finger
A survey would likely find infinitely more arrests for finger flipping than finger pulling. However, the First Amendment protects finger flipping, as confirmed earlier this year by the Western District of Pennsylvania: By 2006, numerous federal courts, including a United States District Court in Pennsylvania,...
The drug wars are more harmful than drugs
Having finished high school before the D.A.R.E. program, how did I stay away from using illegal drugs other than ultimately smoking marijuana literally a handful of times? It did not hurt that I always found tobacco-cigarette smoking gross, and joint-smoking even uglier, since joints looked...
Abolish the death penatly
Thanks to Barry Scheck for posting about the injustice of the death penalty, which continues to ensnare innocent people, and for referencing a recent in-depth New Yorker article presenting the case that Cameron Todd was innocent of arson, but still executed in 2004 for the...