Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney
Fairfax Criminal Lawyer / Virginia DUI Attorney- Highly-Rated
Pursuing Your Best Defense Since 1991
Is a great trial lawyer only born, or can one be taught?
Can great trial lawyering be taught, or is one only born with it? When I was a college senior considering law school, a relative panned my consideration of possibly being a trial lawyer. This relative, not a lawyer himself, viewed successful trial lawyers as being...
Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
Do jurors want to be tortured for hours by droning lawyers, witnesses and judges, interspersed with waiting for bench conferences with silence that might be even more excruciating? Or, do they want to be transported into the middle of an interesting story, experiencing the action with...
For the ten thousandth time, don’t waive your right to remain silent
Susan Smith apparently would not have been convicted had she not spoken to the police. Mark Castillo smoothed prosecutors’ path towards a murder conviction — unless he successfully argues insanity — by calling the police this past weekend to tell them he had killed his three...
The ambiguity of silence; the silencing of ambiguity
Undoubtedly, cops have legions of tricks to convince suspects to give up their Miranda right to remain silent, starting with delaying an arrest and detention so as not to need to give such rights yet, proceeding to intimidating body language (including patting the cop’s handgun...
Criminal penalties for not reporting a felony that one has concealed
Every once in awhile, the media reports on federal prosecutions for "misprision of felony". This blog entry seeks to debunk any notion that it is a crime merely to fail to report a crime, as opposed to concealing a felony cognizable by a federal court and...
Justice Alito surprises by strengthening Batson
Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Once a person becomes a Supreme Court justice, no concern should exist about being pleasing enough to senators and the president to get onto a higher court (and getting elevated to a higher court or retained on the existing...
Yow! I AM having fun, on the road to a win
Zippy the Pinhead is my favorite comic strip. Zippy spews non sequiturs, repeatedly proclaims "Yow!", and asks "Are we having fun yet?" in this overcommercialized society that tells people they won’t be glad til they use Dial. Every four years, he runs for president. Trials...
4 of 7 Virginia Supreme Court judges uphold First-Amendment-violative criminal spam law
Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory’s website). All spammers’ eyes should be on Virginia — where a high percentage of computer crime cases are prosecuted, due to Virginia’s housing such major computer servers as America Online’s —  after its Supreme Court wrongfully upheld the state’s criminal...
Something about Valentine’s Day, courts, and sexual devices
Molly Ivins on the stupidity of Texas’s ban on the sale of sexual devices. She did not live to see the Fifth Circuit’s ban on this ban. Happy Valentine’s day. When we set aside the commercial hype around the holiday, it is a day and...
Why Don’t You Ask Your Client?
In Virginia District Court, mandatory criminal discovery is practically non-existent, and is limited to defendants’ statements to law enforcement that the prosecutor intends to introduce into evidence, the defendant’s criminal record, and Brady/exculpatory evidence (except that the prosecutor ordinarily is the sole person to decide what evidence...