Underdog Blog – Fairfax Criminal Defense Lawyer | Virginia DUI Attorney

Mandatory minimum sentencing can bite a criminal defendant in the butt with a variety of subsequent convictions, including for repeat DWI, theft and drug convictions. As a Virginia DUI lawyer, I know that the notion that many people have about juvenile criminal court guilty findings...

Embezzling is a scarlet letter theft crime which, if convicted, is a smear on the defendant's reputation. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know how critical it is for the defense to find every possible way to dismantle embezzlement and other prosecutions. Virginia's embezzling statute...

Roadblocks are all too common with police. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that police roadblocks and so-called safety checkpoints are established for such purported reasons as traffic safety (for instance with sobriety checkpoints and seatbelt checkpoints), border patrol, and seeking fleeing criminal suspects....

Incoming new head prosecutors will start their terms in January 2020 in Fairfax County and Arlington County, and possibly even in Loudoun County. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that each such county that gets a Democratic commonwealth's attorney will experience a prosecutorial sea...

Plea negotiations -- better called settlement negotiations, because a dismissal is a better settlement than a negotiated conviction -- are a stark reality of criminal defense. As a Fairfax criminal and DUI lawyer, I know that attorneys who do not want to engage in...

Restorative justice (RJ) is an alternative dispute resolution approach that enables criminal cases to be resolved without convictions (and sometimes without even having formal court charges). As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that with RJ the alleged victim and accused (the accused needs the...

The criminal defense needs to be ready to raise and attack the following circumstances in prosecutions for possession to distribute drugs: Weight: Significant weight of the alleged drugs by itself does not constitute intent to distribute. For instance, when a medicinal user of marijuana finds...

Failure to register and re-register as a sex offender is a jailable offense in Virginia, whose statutory law requires such registration for those convicted of murder and such sexual offenses as sexually violent offenses, carnal knowledge with a child of thirteen to fifteen years old,...

Secondary traffic offenses in Virginia are traffic violations that expressly do not permit the issuance of a traffic citation, summons or ticket unless in conjunction with a primary offense, which is a violation of one of more other traffic or criminal laws of the commonwealth....

Special need is sometimes used by police to try to justify stopping people when they do not have probable cause nor individualized reasonable articulable suspicion to stop, frisk or search a person for evidence of criminal activity. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I am disheartened...