Criminal Defense

Our tax dollars pay extraordinary amounts of money for law enforcement officers and prosecutors to spend countless hours each year to the tune of millions of dollars (if not billions of dollars) to further pursue the drug war that is a failure and an excessive incursion...

Courtesy SunWolf: A criminal defense lawyer’s criminal defense lawyer, showing lawyers the powerful path to humanizing our clients, through storytellng, kindness to all, summoning our inner magic, and a reminder that “reality is no obstacle.” Dr. SunWolf — the great storytelling lawyer who proclaims that...

In criminal law, “three strikes and you’re out” refers to severe mandatory minimum jail sentencing, and not baseball, other than that mandatory minimum sentencing, for the defendant, can feel like being slammed on the skull with a baseball bat and smashed in the eye with a high-speed...

I once got a glimpse of how clients feel trusting me to fight for them when I frantically called for help to a former client who became my contractor, to fix what became a temporary burp in an important part of my firm’s administrative/technological operations. I have ended...

A drug dog’s positive alert, by itself, does not justify searching a car’s passengers, where the police have no particularized suspicion to believe that the passenger possesses drugs or is acting criminally together with the others in the car. Whtehead v. Virginia, 278 Va. 300,...

What is it like for a doctor handling a life-or-death emergency when the patients’ relatives are pleading, even screaming "Doctor, do something!" "Doctor, what is my relative’s situation?" "Doctor, why are you not doing a better job?" As a criminal defense lawyer, I also face...

A recent Virginia appellate opinion reminds us what we already know: Being human, judges can make serious mistakes. Parties’ lawyers, must be at the ready to prevent and remedy those mistakes. Latasha Gordon was convicted at trial for two counts of unlawful wounding (each count...

A great trial law teacher warned criminal defense lawyers about throwing feces at an opposing witness during cross examination, lest the witness act like a cooling fan that shoots back the feces all over the lawyer’s face and clothes. Too many prosecutors cloak police with...

I have repeatedly underlined why police lying is all too common. Lying is bad enough among humans in any time or place. When a police officer lies to the detriment of a criminal defendant’s liberty, that is particularly reprehensible. For every police officer caught lying,...

Yesterday, I kept pinching myself in ecstasy over the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision requiring police to have probable cause to believe the existence of relevant criminal activity before taking a drug-sniffing dog to the front door of one’s home. Florida v. Jardines, ___ U.S. ___...