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Attenuation trumps earlier 4th Amendment issues in Fairfax case
Attenuation can trump earlier Fourth Amendment violations. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I read with interest chief Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Penny Azcarate's application of such law to deny a Virginia criminal defendant's challenge to a child pornography-yielding search of a computer and cellphone....
Embracing the 2nd Amendment Is Critical for the Criminal Defense
Embracing your firearm rights is a very important approach of your attorney if you are accused of a crime in that category. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I strongly support giving full teeth and strength to your Second Amendment right to bear arms / firearms...
Contesting Virginia firearm prosecutions with the 2nd Amendment
Contesting Vrginia firearm prosecution sometimes needs to draw on the protections of the Constitution's Second Amendment. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that we Virginia criminal defense lawyers must not rely on Constitutional arguments of statutory invalidity alone in pursuing victory for our clients,...
Home Visits by Police & 4th Amendment – Criminal Lawyer comments
Home visits by poiice are common. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that the Fourth Amendment limits the time, place and manner of those visits. For starters, the Fourth Amendment requires police to have probable cause to believe the existence of relevant criminal activity...
Criminal arrestees should not expect 4th Amendment protection of their conversations in police vehicles
Criminal arrestees should not expect Fourth Amendment protection of their conversations in police vehicles.
Police sometimes will put more than one co-defendant-arrestee in the same police vehicle, to transport to the jail or police station. It may be tempting for the arrested co-defendants then to begin...
Fourth Circuit reverses conviction of pro se defendant, due to no sufficient waiver of counsel
Today, the United States Court of Appeals confirmed that said court has “never held that counsel can be relinquished by means short of waiver.” Consequently, the trial court’s finding of forfeiture of counsel by felony defendant Phillip Ductan’s uncooperative pretrial behavior during his criminal trial was...
Fourth Circuit puts brakes on police using innocent facts to detain and search people.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is often referred to as one of the more conservative circuits for criminal law. Fortunately, the Fourth Circuit breaks from that characterization from time to time, including earlier this week, when the court determined that...
Fourth Circuit affirms suppression of fruits of the poisonous tree
Prosecutors often will try to overcome bad searches by claiming such factors as inevitable discovery, and intervening events that cure any taint. Praised be the Fourth Circuit recently, 2-1, for not buying the prosecutor’s arguments over an unconstitutional stop of a car, without which the cops would...
The Fourth Circuit rejects giving ESP powers to searching cops. Was this a Walking While a Young Black Male patdown?
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...
When a police search is valid today, but would be invalid under later 4th Amendment jurisprudence
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...