Dissect Virginia statutes, or pay the consequences, says Fairfax criminal lawyer

Dissect Virginia statutes as an essential part of your defense. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that such an approach is an essential step in pursuing your best defense in court. The Virginia Court of Appeals has underlined the necessity of such an approach in Wallace v. Virginia, ___ Va. App. ___ (Jan. 23, 2024).  Taylor Amil Wallace was convicted of “computer fraud, obtaining money by false pretenses, [and] uttering forged checks,” arising from her deposits of four allegedly fraudulent checks into an automatic teller machine (ATM). At a non-jury trial, the judge convicted Wallace of all the forgoing criminal charges. Praised be Wallace’s public defender appellate lawyer(s) for not stopping at an affirmed conviction before a three-judge Virginia Court of Appeals panel. Instead, her lawyer convinced the full complement of judges on that court to review her case en banc, thus obtaining reversal her conviction on the computer fraud counts, with fourteen of the seventeen of that court’s judges ruling in her favor.

Your Virginia criminal lawyer needs a flow chart to dissect the prosecutor’s case

Numerous times, I have seen criminal defense lawyers and prosecutors lose at trial simply by not creating and using a simple flow chart, whether emblazoned in their head or in write. Efforts to dissect Virginia statutes and the case of the assistant commonwealth’s attorney / prosecutor should not miss this tool. Here is a very basic trial flowchart I often use. The ELEMENTS line of my trial outline if the important part of my flowchart for determining whether all the elements of the applicable statute have been met by one or more items of testimony or other evidence from the prosecution. The computer fraud statute under which Wallace was convicted before having her conviction reversed, very simply sets forth the elements of that statute: “Any person who [1] uses a [2] computer or computer network, [3] without authority and: [4]. Obtains property or services by false pretenses; [5]. Embezzles or commits larceny; or [6]. Converts the property of another; is guilty of the crime of computer fraud.” Va. Code § 18.2-152.3. In Wallace, the prosecutor’s evidence failed to prove the third of the foregoing elements, which is that the computer use was without authority. Of course, the use was with authority, seeing that Wallace was depositing checks with her name as payee to her bank’s ATM machine. Wallace. 

What should my Virginia criminal lawyer do when faced with complex statutes and evidence?

Behind even the most powerfully persuasive Virginia criminal lawyer arguments in court is substantial preparation to dissect and overcome the prosecutor’s case, regardless of how much of that preparation has been focused for a particular defendant’s case or over the span of the lawyer’s career. Particularly with bodycam footage being common part of discovery with Fairfax DUI cases and many other prosecutions, your lawyer needs to set aside sometimes lengthy sessions merely to watch the video portion of the discovery, in addition to reviewing police reports, witness statements, other documentary evidence, investigatory data, expert witness data, medial data, financial and other data, and cellphone contents data, By the time your lawyer steps into the courtroom for your trial date, s/he should have mastered, synthesized and distilled this data. For a year before law school, I was a financial examiner at a major international bank, where I dealt with, investigated and analyzed massive amounts of data on a daily basis. Consequently, my data reviews, investigations and analyses as a Virginia criminal lawyer flow smoothly from there.

Should I appeal if I lose my Virginia criminal trial?

Wallace reaped the benefits of appealing her case. Wallace If you lose at trial, talk with your Virginia criminal attorney about whether you should appeal. If you appeal a trial conviction in Virginia Circuit Court, generally, Supreme Court caselaw bars the court from giving you a worse sentence if convicted on retrial, absent materially new adverse information that arises concerning the defendant. Make sure that your steps to secure an appeal cross all the t’s and dot all the I’s. The law and Virginia appellate courts can be merciless about following appellate procedure. When your lawyer writes your appellate brief, that ideally will include dissecting the prosecutor’s case.

Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz relentlessly pursues your best defense against Virginia DUI, felony and misdemeanor prosecutions. Usually, you can secure an initial consultation with Jon Katz either the same day or the next date after calling us at 703-383-1100 for your free initial in-person confidential consultation with Jon about your pending court case.