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Inauguration 2021 Week – Fairfax Courthouse Remains Open
Inauguration 2021 week sees the Fairfax courthouse remaining open, but a neighboring courthouse only opened two days Inauguration 2021 week will bring more security to the nation’s capital than any previous presidential swearing in, related to the January 6 riotous break-in of the nation’s Capitol....
Fairfax Jury Trials will Proceed Without Wall Portraits with this Judge
Fairfax jury trials are in the process of resuming, mainly starting with criminal defendants being held without any payable or affordable bond. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that one judge this week made the bold ruling to keep past judges' portraits off his...
The illusion of needing to hire a former prosecutor for criminal defense – Part I
The passionate, committed, and winning criminal defense lawyer does criminal defense because it is in his or her blood, and s/he thrives with such work.
After the fatal Charlotte police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott – The importance for police and all people to practice de-escalation
The aftermath of the September 20, 2016, fatal Charlotte police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott includes police insistence that Mr. Scott was displaying a handgun, and his family's claiming the opposite. (Finally released police video footage of the shooting is here.) Even assuming for argument's...
September 11 fifteen years later
We cannot wait any longer to reverse all the civil liberties and human rights violations that have been perpetrated by the United States government post-September 11 in the name of fighting terrorism.
At NoVa NORML – Discussing Police, Weed and You – Your Liberty in the Balance
It always is all the more an honor when a NORML chapter invites me to speak at one of their gatherings. My most recent such speaking engagement was at the Northern Virginia NORML's August 9 meeting in Arlington, Virginia. There, my talk on marijuana reform...
The fight for justice is no popularity contest, and the battle can be exhilaratingly powerful
My client can get swept up with me in that fireball of positive energy that focuses on directing a fan at any dirt thrown our way rather than descending into curses and complaints.
Engaging with clients in the place where they are, even if on a roller coaster
One of my favorite clients and I were debriefing about his case, and talking and joking a lot just as regular people — not as lawyer to client — in a courthouse conference room, after we scheduled the next proceeding in his case. This man...
Humanizing criminal defendants by treating everyone else as human
Many prosecutors and police (and perhaps too many judges) apparently see criminal defense lawyers as a curious mix of being part of the legal establishment — “one of us”, in the minds of many of them — who also represent “them”/”the other”/the person to be...
Being persuasively real when procedural rules and bench rulings apply, and the objections fly
When I studied in 1979 for my certificate to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation ("CPR"), the instructor never told us that as we compress the chest during the administration of CPR, some people will have vomit come out of their mouths, the same mouths in which we...