Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Ever since launching my website in 1999 and then my blog in 2006, I have made my life more transparent than ever, usually in various Sunday postings.   Last Thursday and Friday I went to the gathering and funeral for my grandmother Esther Zimmer. Her obituary is...

Image from public domain. LSD once was lawful earlier in the Sixties. Now it is not. K2/Spice remains lawful in the majority of states, but Virginia just added itself today to the list of states outlawing it. D.C. police have threatened crackdowns on K2/Spice stores. Although LSD...

Supreme Court’s spiral staircase. Copyright Jon Katz (photographed October 2010). Today, the United States Supreme Court substantially retreated from Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), in determining that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause was not offended where the state trial court allowed into evidence the victim’s dying...

Camera image from U.S. Geological Survey website.   Today, I appeared around 2:30 p.m. EDT, pre-recorded, on BBC TV Channel 1’s South East Today, on the Christopher Tappin extradition case that I have discussed here and here. The interview at BBC’s Washington, D.C., bureau was about...

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). When I started practicing criminal defense in 1991, the phrase “guilty plea” sounded like a dirty word, but I already knew that such pleas are a major part of the criminal “justice” system which otherwise would...

To those in the Washington, D.C., television area, watch me tonight around 5:15-5:30 p.m. on Fox 5, Washington DC, about Redskins owner Dan Snyder’s libel suit against the City Paper. The First Amendment rules, of course, always. The lawsuit filed yesterday in New York. I...

Last year, I blogged about a 6-5 Virginia intermediate appellate court opinion affirming a drunk driving conviction where the DWI was allegedy committed on private property not used as a thoroughfare, and not committed in the presence of a police officer. Today, Virginia’s highest court...

Today, the Fourth Circuit ruled that a marijuana disposition under Va. Code § 18.2-251 (also known as 251, which I fully discuss here) is not always a conviction for immigration purposes. Crespo v. Holder, 631 F.3d 130 (4th Cir., Jan. 11, 2011) . Crespo says: “We thus start...

  Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Thanks to a listserv member for citing to a 1965 Supreme Court decision that underlines the unconstitutional overbreadth of statutes criminalizing one’s not obeying a "lawful order" of a police officer, where the statute does nothing to narrow such orders...