Criminal Defense

Penalty setting is an awesome power of jurors who convict criminal defendants in Virginia. As a Fairfax criminal defense lawyer, I know the awesome power that juries have not only in terms of determining guilt or innocence, but also with recommending sentences.

Reefer decriminalization finally has passed the Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, most likely to be signed by the commonwealth's Democratic governor after the two chambers' bill versions are harmonized. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer and drug defense attorney, I applaud this progress with...

Bench pushback is here in Northern Virginia, where judges will not automatically rubber stamp mutually agreed requests to dismiss criminal charges nor mutually agreed sentences and suspended imposition of sentence terms and conditions. Some judges will even ponder from the bench about whether certain prosecutorial...

Prosecution continues fully in Northern Virginia after vocal reformer chief prosecutors took office in Fairfax County, Arlington and Loudoun. As a Fairfax criminal defense lawyer, I correctly expected that the new chief prosecutors would be no worse for criminal defendants than their immediate predecessors, and...

Maintain vigilance with prosecutors and police. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know the necessity of such an approach. When Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong were photographed heartily laughing with each other at their first meeting, they were at all times maintaining their calculation, cunning,...

Abolishing the death penalty has long been critical for me. Abolition is a major human rights, social justice, and racial justice issue. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer and longtime human rights activist, I bristled when eight years ago a fellow Virginia criminal defense lawyer called...

Open beer, wine and alcohol containers often are consumed while covered in paper bags to try to avoid police intervention. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that Virginia law bars consuming alcohol while driving, and also possessing an alcoholic beverage in a public schoolyard.

Sea changes are happening that benefit criminal defendants with the new Virginia chief prosecutors in Fairfax County, Arlington and Loudoun As a Fairfax DUI lawyer, I see numerous personnel changes at these Virginia commonwealth attorneys' offices; more flexibility with numerous case negotiations; and more opportunity...

Juvenile life without parole cannot be made mandatory by statute when the crime was committed under the age of eighteen. Miller v. Alabama, 567 U. S. 460 (2012); Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. 718 (2016). As a Fairfax criminal defense lawyer, I know that after...

DFS -- the Virginia Department of Forensic Science -- on January 24, 2020, announced (1) a new testing procedure to rule out industrial hemp and (2) no longer requiring a court order for the agency to test suspected marijuana. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I...