Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Image from public domain. In late 2006, I blogged about getting a thirty-plant Maryland marijuana felony prosecution reduced to a simple marijuana possession conviction, and a medical marijuana sentence of a $100 fine plus court costs, which ultimately was converted to a probation before judgment. ...

Thanks to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, trial lawyer Anna Durbin for authorizing me to post her attached excellent email message responding to a listserv discussion about how lawyers prepare their clients to testify at trial. I have known Anna for many years, through our having attended the Trial...

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Maryland follows the Frye/Reed test for admitting expert testimony into evidence: “[B]efore a scientific opinion will be received as evidence at trial, the basis of that opinion must be shown to be generally accepted as reliable...

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...

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 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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...