Criminal Defense
Jordan Edwards – Where do the unjustified police shootings end?
One 2014 day when I entered a nearby courthouse, a sheriff's deputy lamented the backlash of public opinion against police after police shot dead Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The unjustified police killings continued, including Eric Garner's death on Staten Island following a police chokehold,...
“What legitimate purpose does it serve to hold any human being in solitary confinement for 40 years awaiting execution?”
Praised be Justice Stephen Breyer, apparently the United States Supreme Court's strongest skeptic on the death penalty's Constiutionality, who emphasized on April 24, 2017:
"What legitimate purpose does it serve to hold any human being in solitary confinement for 40 years awaiting execution? What does...
Virginia- Unlawful firearm discharge means negligent discharge
Most crimes cannot be proven merely by committing the act -- known as actus reus -- but also require proof of criminal intent, known as mens rea. Generally, one of four levels of mens rea is required before a conviction may be obtained, namely purposeful,...
Death row inmates’ champion Steve Bright always inspires me
In 1991, I was still yearning to re-direct my career from the 25-lawyer corporate law firm that I had joined two years later, to something more meaningful. Ever since finishing law school, I went out of my way to meet birds of a professional and...
Dissenting federal appellate judge bemoans the Drug War’s toll on the Constitution
Nearly two generations of Americans, born since 1980, knows of no life other than that under the drug wars spurred during the Reagan administration, complete with metal detectors and other intrusive searches in schools without particularized suspicion; draconian drug sentencing regimes involving lengthy mandatory minimum...
Narrow tailoring is needed for restrictions on Internet access by probationers & parolees
Plenty of probation agents and sentencing judges may have a penchant for barring access to the Internet for certain convicted sex offenders, in such cases as sexual assault and child pornography. However, doing so in a knee-jerk fashion and without narrow tailoring violates a convicted...
When Courts Protect Questionable Police Searches Through the Inevitable Discovery Doctrine
Often when I challenge police searches for lack of a search warrant or for other Constitutional infirmities, the prosecutor argues that the incriminating evidence would inevitably have been lawfully discovered by police if not first discovered in the questionable way with which the evidence in...
The courtroom persuasiveness of a powerfully respectful approach backed by strength
When a client urges the necessity of my destroying an opposing witness on cross examination, I respond that the backlash from destroying the opposing witness can be much more harmful than my telling the defense story through cross examination, bringing out important evidentiary points, and...
Virginia malicious wounding- Non-consensual tattooing is disfigurement
Alexander Michael Edwards in 2016 was convicted in Campbell County, Virginia, Circuit Court for malicious wounding for the non-consensual tattooing of two minors, and for conspiring to murder them to avoid their testimony against him at trial. The elements of malicious wounding under the Virginia...
Virginia criminal defense – Three hour delay to arrest does not amount to stale probable cause
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution limits police authority to stop, seize, and search people and their property. Sadly, the United States Supreme Court over the decades has limited the strength of the Fourth Amendment in numerous ways, including the horrendous Terry v....