Criminal Defense

If the prosecutor comes to court with a smirking attitude, the defense lawyer does not need to do anything to wipe the smirk off the prosecutor's face other than doing the criminal defense lawyer's job, keeping his eyes on the prize.

O.J. Simpson's criminal murder trial dragged on for months before the jury reached a not guilty verdict. That is a big contrast to how quickly matters move on a Northern Virginia General District Court date.

One approach to persuading prosecutors is to consider why they became a prosecutor in the first place. The word is out on the streets that if a lawyer wants to become a litigator with a prestigious large corporate law firm, one should buck to attend...

Achieving and maintaining equanimity is critical in the courtroom battlefield and all battlefields. The challenges to powerful equanimity abound. When we recognize and remember that sh*t coming from others is coming from their own roller coaster and suffering

Once the persuader fully immerses himself or herself into the circle of the story, and fully engages others from that circle, they will be more likely to want to join the persuader in that persuasive circle.

In the taijiquan martial art that I practice, we have the concepts of sparring inside a circle, disrupting the opponent's circle, and preventing the opponent from disrupting our own circle. Similarly, it is ideal for me to speak and negotiate with prosecutors in a proverbial...

Today, the Virginia Court of Appeals adopted the police collective knowledge doctrine that already applies in federal courts. Edmond v. Virginia, ___ Va. App. ___ (Aug. 2, 2016). Under the collective knowledge, "an officer is justified in acting upon an instruction from another officer if...

"The duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict." American Bar Association's standards for prosecutors, Standard 3-1.2(c). Some prosecutors apply that principle so well that when they later switch to private law practice, their criminal defense lawyer colleagues welcome them into the...

Yes, the world is filled with too many people too often acting like heartlessly dangerous people. Part of my job is to defuse, shrink, disintegrate, disinfect, and deflect the unseemly and dangerous actions of others, and to extract the gold that can even be found...

Drug detection is about chemistry, and even prosecutors' chemists -- with a never-ending stream and often backlog of alleged drugs to test while still testifying in court -- can get drug testing wrong, particularly with being challenged by mental and physical exhaustion with their heavy...