Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
Fairfax Criminal Lawyer / Virginia DUI Attorney- Highly-Rated
Pursuing Your Best Defense Since 1991
Cops can’t play fast and loose with Miranda
Miranda warnings are required when "a reasonable man in the suspect’s position would have understood his situation" to be one of custody. Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 422 (1984). To determine whether a reasonable person would have understood the situation to have been one...
International Extraditions: To be Fought Tooth and Nail
International extradition defense seems to be an area that most criminal defense lawyers have either not handled at all, or very little. I learned this after being hired for such a case a few months ago, and learning that one of my favorite and most experienced...
What Justifies a Prosecutor Telling a Witness to Withhold Documents from a Defense Lawyer?
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). One day while waiting for court to start, I approached the chemist in my client’s drug possession case. He said he would talk to me only if the prosecutor was present. Once I got the three...
You want a trial? I’ll go to trial / Plus, beating the Intoxylizer 5000
When I became a public defender lawyer in the early 1990’s all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to fight the good fight, it turned out that my survival instincts — developed all the more since early childhood by growing up among plenty of peers who were more...
Blood Alcohol Content Test Results can be Higher than the BAC at the Time of Driving
When it comes to drunk driving prosecutions, blood alcohol content test results are subject to attack from all sides, including attacks on the accuracy of the test results in the first place. Moreover, judges and juries need to be educated that it is not a...
Too many innocent people get convicted
Too many innocent people get convicted, whether through wrongful convictions by judges or juries, or by pleading guilty when the likelihood is high of a wrongful conviction (with an attendant harsher conviction from pleading not guilty) (North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970) allows innocent...
Will I win or lose?
Fellow criminal defense blogger Shawn Matlock recently blogged about handling potential clients’ and actual clients’ inquiries about whether they will win. Here is my comment on the matter: My short answer it to be honest with the potential client, and the actual client, about your ability and...
If humans input data into a machine, the Confrontation Clause is implicated
This month, a two-judge majority of the Fourth Circuit decided that an expert witness may testify in criminal court about the machine-generated results of raw data about drugs in a defendant’s blood, without necessitating the presence of the technician who operated the machine. The case...
Breathing life into the justification defense
A convicted felon confronts a handgun being waved in his face. He disarms the gun wielder, and acts as expeditiously as possible to turn the gun over to the police. He has been confronted by Hobson’s choices: (1) either seize the handgun and face violating...
It’s not how you dress, but how you persuade
Adam Levin at Southern Criminal Law e-mailed criminal defense lawyers “whose blawgs I frequently read” for tips on practicing criminal law for newer lawyers and for those transitioning to solo practice. Here are my replies in CAPS: Philosophy What practical advice do you have for...