Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

In the courts where I practice criminal defense, even giving an unwanted hug is an assault. That is additional testimony to the wisdom of bowing to others to greet them, apart from the reduced risk of catching swine flu (or mucus, if the person recently...

DEA image in the public domain. Federal courts repeatedly impose harsh prison sentences, including with drug sentencing schemes that should not exist in a just world. Although the federal sentencing guidelines by now are advisory only, many federal judges still rely heavily on them, as...

Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) In her wonderfully compassionate way, the amazing SunWolf emphasizes that jurors generally are going to bring their usual behaviors from their daily lives into the deliberation room regardless of the judges’ warnings to tell them to change behaviors that...

Cops must stop shredding the Constitution with hunches, particularly because they are not Quasimodo. Praised be Maryland’s highest court for recognizing that the cops had no more than a hunch of criminal activity afoot when witnessing a car drive around a parking lot, and then signaling...

The criminal justice system is so overgrown that crime evidence is bound too often to get mixed up, misplaced, and contaminated. For drug prosecutions, the suspected drugs may pass through several hands before being tested by a chemist. Often, the seizing police officers have the...

Once again, yesterday, I learned great lessons at the Capitol Hill t’ai chi-sensing hands/push hands practice, including the following practice for sensing hands: – Move hands little and with little force. – Connect elbows with pusher. – Connect palm to pusher’s wrist. – Push against opponent’s...

Where do so many judges and jurors get the false notion that cops always tell the truth? Cops are but humans, so they are as prone to prevaricate as any non-cop. Praised be my fellow criminal defense brother Paul Mack — from neighboring Howard County...

Inadmissible hearsay remains inadmissible even if to explain a cop’s reasons for being on the scene. At best for the prosecution, let the parties stipulate for the cop to testify simply that s/he was on patrol. Praised be Maryland’s highest court for unanimously getting this issue...

On May 4, 2009, the United States Supreme Court decided to address the Constitutional limits on imposing life sentences on juveniles. So long as the court addresses the Eight Amendment issues in the twin cases — which is likely — the court’s resulting opinions likely...

Neither the Fourth Circuit nor the Virginia appellate courts are known as liberal hotbeds. That makes this week all the more sweet with the following two Fourth Amendment appellate victories from those courts: Neely v. U.S., ___ F.3d ___  (4th Cir., April 29, 2009), confirms that...