Criminal Defense

It can be scary for a criminal defense lawyer to place the fate of his or her client in the hands of the judge and jury. However, the effective criminal defense lawyer does not simply hand the defendant to the jury.

Go and enjoy the rest of the Fourth of July weekend, and remember that Independence Day has less meaning when criminal suspects do not assert their rights to remain silent with the police and to refuse police searches.

Policing is a necessary evil that is antithetical to a free, open and democratic society. Policing is a poison on society and the body politic when our society is overpoliced, which it has been for decades,

If a person wants to see people stripped of their happy-face/can-do armor and stiff upper lip, practice criminal defense. If my criminal defense client was not already in a personal mess of sorts that led to his or her arrest (remembering that innocent people get...

If my blog reacted to every extreme act of violence and every controversy over court cases, my blog would cover nothing else. The Western press repeatedly focuses on violence against Westerners -- and in particular massacres -- more than against those in the rest of...

In the abstract, much in the law world is unexciting, mind-numbing and sometimes maddening, but when practiced on the side of the angels and for people in true need, is exciting.

Stagefright interferes tremendously with performers, persuaders and salespeople from benefiting from the gift of an audience. A live audience provides the actor with instant feedback that is not available to a musician in a studio, a politician in front of a camera in his or...

Virginia's Supreme Court affirmed a felony theft conviction by a jury, accompanied by a five-year prison sentence, despite defense counsel's protestations that the defendant was in in the courtroom in jail clothes and a jail identification bracelet.

I am cognizant about judges' tough jobs, while also knowing that judges need to know about the above realities of their jobs before accepting the job as a judge. Some judges take the job with a paycut, truly wanting to serve. Others take the job...

Nobody ever said that trial lawyering would be an easy profession. As I have said time and time again, this work is filled with proverbial projectile vomiting, projectile diarrhea, underhandedness by too many prosecutors and police, unfairness by too many judges, and shoveling sh*t.