Jon Katz’s victories

My clients tend not to care how I win for them as long as I win, even if through a final dismissal rather than through the greater excitement of an acquittal. Recently, I got a case dismissed due to the Sixth Amendment violation of my...

A vehicle collides so hard into the one in front of it that the struck vehicle suffers substantial damage, and the struck vehicle then collides into the next car ahead. Police arrive to find my client with bloodshot and watery eyes, all upset about a...

Criminal defense is a wild ride. One day, I am sitting on top of the world with a big court victory, the next day I am appearing before a very difficult judge to say the least, and the next day I am talking to a...

Prosecutor: “Jon, you are a private practice lawyer who is willing to waste time.” Translation: “You put time into defending your clients without concern whether doing so will not be financially profitable to you.” One of the more upstanding local prosecutors recently said that to me before court...

Our tax dollars pay prosecutors and police to serve the people, including those they arrest and prosecute, not just to serve the amorphous “people that I — the cop or prosecutor — am here to protect.” How many police, prosecutors and other civil servants see...

Here is an overview of events leading to my recent trial win for a 0.14 blood draw case in Virginia General District Court. GDC: The police officer testified to seeing my client’s car stuck in a ditch, and my client’s saying he drove the car and nothing to drink...

During the year between college and law school, I was a financial auditor at one of the nation’s then-thirty largest banks. We reviewed the bank’s financial activities to assure the bank was adhering to safe and sound financial practices. This was the closest I ever came...

Yesterday, a jury acquitted my client of possessing with intent to distribute eight pounds of marijuana found in the backseat of his car, after we had lost our suppression hearing and were without a successful way to create doubt that this was anything other than...

Praised be my clients — amounting to the vast majority of them — who do not rush to plead guilty in an effort to avoid worse sentencing exposure in the event of a trial loss, than from pleading guilty. By the time my clients and...

“Jon,” an able Virginia criminal defense colleague said to me, “sometimes I just concede probable cause to arrest my DWI client, to keep out the preliminary breath test.” Why do that? Judges are not allowed at bench trials to consider suppression hearing evidence for the...