Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
Fairfax Criminal Lawyer / Virginia DUI Attorney- Highly-Rated
Pursuing Your Best Defense Since 1991
Red lights, dogs and the Fourth Circuit
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Police love when suspects drive cars. The driver is bound to violate one traffic law or another, thus justifying a police stop of the car, and an attempt to reveal criminal activity afoot. Police also love to bring "drug" dogs to attempt...
How Can a Proper Terry Patdown Find Crack Cocaine?
Bill of Rights. Recently during a suppression hearing in a drug case, the police officer testified that controlled dangerous substances fell to the ground from my client’s pants as the cop conducted a pat down for weapons, on the cop’s claimed belief that this was a...
Virginia inmate released on new non-biological evidence
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) A prison inmate’s case does not become quiet merely because of a conviction and a lost appeal. Many inmates next seek post conviction relief, whether the term of art for such relief applications is habeas corpus, coram nobis, or any...
Calling the Dogs Means a Detention
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Praised be Virginia’s intermediate appellate court for generally finding that a detention takes place once a police officer tells a person that s/he is having a drug dog come to search the suspect’s vehicle. In Middlebrooks v. Virginia, ___...
Persuading in the First Person
The National Criminal Defense College and Trial Lawyers College focus on persuasion through storytelling. What to do, though, when a judge tries to stop the lawyer from first-person storytelling (“I was sitting there minding my own business, when he rushed at me with a meat...
What Keeps a Lawyer Practicing Law?
What keeps me practicing law, and enjoying it? Law school was not sufficient to keep me practicing law and enjoying it, with the exception that I benefited tremendously spiritually, intellectually, and growth-wise from the immigration law clinic, through which I first-chaired the first two trials of...
When release is conditioned on drugging
Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) More commonly when I was a public defender lawyer, from time to time I would have clients who were at great risk of being ordered by the judge for a psychological evaluation — e.g., for being seriously delusional, and, therefore,...
More on defending drunk driving in Virginia
Image from Virginia Forestry Dept’s website. In Virginia and Washington, D.C., the law says that drivers in those states impliedly consent to have their blood alcohol levels tested if the police have sufficient grounds for seeking such tests. In that regard, here are important relevant Virginia...
Where to Check Speedometer Calibration
Here are some Northern Virginia businesses that have been reported to me as providing speedometer calibration checks. I tend to recommend such checks for clients accused of jailable reckless driving based on excessive speed. This list is a few years old at the time of...
Maintaining calm in the eye of the storm
Some people seek calm by avoiding conflict. I seek to use calm to harmonize conflict to the advantage of me and my client. By applying the principles of t’ai chi to my Fairfax criminal law practice, I do my best neither to chase an opponent’s...