Criminal Defense

Criminal defense trial battle requires being as fearless and skilled as possible in approaching even the most formidable-seeming opponents. Edward Lee Elmore’s capital murder trial lawyer, unfortunately, exercised avoidance with forensic evidence: Properly applied, the totality-of-the-evidence standard results in only one reasonable conclusion: there is...

For over a decade, my website has prominently featured a Know Your Rights page. Those rights are prominently linked in the blue KNOW YOUR RIGHTS box on the lefthand side of this blog. Repeatedly, people get arrested, and often convicted for not knowing those rights,...

When I became a public defender lawyer after two years working with a corporate law firm, I went from a high-rent office two blocks from the White House with a fancy desk to a non-descript office that was literally across the freight railroad tracks.I had...

“You do not have the right to quit trying. (The universe wobbles when you do.) You have the right to quit Toxic People. (They’re contagious.) .” Dr. SunWolf (who confirms to me that this ubiquitous quote is indeed hers). In Practical Jury Dynamics, amazing human,...

When I interview candidates to work for me, I inform them that a passion for civil liberties heavily drives my choice of cases. That means that I have never rejected a client merely because s/he is accused of a heinous act, even when I strongly believe s/he has...

Criminal defense is battle — and sometimes war — pure and simple. I have no business taking on a client unless I will take off the boxing gloves and focus on victory at every turn, within the bounds of professional conduct rules, without concern about decimating the...

When police stop a car using radar or laser for speeding charges, I ordinarily only step into the picture for motions to suppress the stop and for jailable reckless driving charges in Virginia, as I do not tend to defend non-jailable moving violation charges. When I...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond is particularly conservative, unfortunately. Even though a president can try to overcome the Fourth Circuit’s conservative reputation by appointing judges not expected to be conservative, the Fourth Circuit’s judges may not overturn the court’s...

Today, the Fourth Circuit ruled that objectively reasonable police reliance on later-overruled binding appellate precedent on searches and seizures, precludes exclusion of the evidence at trial. U.S. v. Wilks, ___ F.3d ___ (4th Cir., July 28, 2011). Wilks finds the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Davis...

Mario Turner got convicted — and sentenced to several years in prison — for aggravated malicious wounding and use of firearm during the commission of a felony. Turner v. Virginia, ___ Va. App. ___ (July 26, 2011). Standing out most about Turner is neither his conviction...