Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Assault trials are a unique challenge to win for the defense, as I have learned after having defended a few hundred of them. For simple assault, sometimes they are most often winnable in a “he said-she said” testimonial situation with no witnesses and no pictures...

Bill of Rights (from the public domain) Praised be the two-judge majority that today reversed a drug conviction, finding that the police on-the-street peek into an arrestee’s underwear — and subsequent cutting off the string attaching a bag of cocaine to his penis — amounted...

Beware when a judge sees the First Amendment’s free speech clause as a hindrance to judicial administration, perhaps emphasizing that the First Amendment is not absolute and does not protect the right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater. (As it turns out, a Supreme...

Police are mere humans, and are thus bound, collectively, to make frequent big mistakes. In their true nature, dogs are here to run at large, and not to be police employees pushed and rewarded to try ferreting out drugs; that alone sets them up to make big mistakes...

Earlier this month, the lawyers.com blog emailed me some questions about defending against charges of driving under the influence of marijuana. The resulting article briefly references some of my responses. Here is more from Underdog, briefly, on defending against such an accusation, including the shibboleth...

Bill of Rights (from the public domain) Praised be Maryland federal trial judge Roger Titus for recently dismissing a prosecution for engaging in a “course of conduct that caused substantial emotional distress” to the alleged victim, through posting messages on Twitter and other websites. Not...

At least for those with jailable criminal cases against them, a large percentage of them enter the courthouse in fear. Those running and operating the courts try to maintain a sense of normalcy — at least superficially — amidst all this fear, but it remains. Some...

A jury cannot eyeball a witness to determine his or her credibility and demeanor by merely being read the complaining witness’s testimony from a prior proceeding. For a criminal defendant, letting such a transcript into evidence can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the defense...

Criminal defense trial battle requires being as fearless and skilled as possible in approaching even the most formidable-seeming opponents. Edward Lee Elmore’s capital murder trial lawyer, unfortunately, exercised avoidance with forensic evidence: Properly applied, the totality-of-the-evidence standard results in only one reasonable conclusion: there is...

For over a decade, my website has prominently featured a Know Your Rights page. Those rights are prominently linked in the blue KNOW YOUR RIGHTS box on the lefthand side of this blog. Repeatedly, people get arrested, and often convicted for not knowing those rights,...