Criminal Defense

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...

If a court case were cut and dried, then fewer unexpected turns of events would occur, and the cost of the defense could be better contained. However, if a criminal defendant wishes to maximize his or her chances of obtaining as much success as possible,...

I would have hoped that the only similarity between the Khmer Rouge and Baton Rouge/Red Stick, would be the word "rouge"/red rather than deadly abuse of power. We don't need nor merit police using excessive force with red sticks, blue sticks, guns, fists, tasers, nor...

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,