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CRIMINAL DEFENSE/ DWI DEFENSE LAWYER IN MARYLAND, VIRGINIA & WASHINGTON, D.C. JON KATZ FIGHTS RELENTLESSLY FOR YOUR RIGHTS, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. CONTACT JON KATZ. Criminal defense is war and battle. Our above-displayed law firm symbol incorporates the essential battle power exemplified by the symbol for the taijiquan martial art that Jon practices, and the scales of justice. 301-495-7755, Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland 20910 / Virginia meeting location: 703-917-6626, Tysons Corner, Fairfax County, Virginia 22102.
Sunday, May 20. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries. On my Twitterpage, @jonkatz5, and elsewhere, I sometimes jot out news items, legal ideas, and personal ideas of interest. Every week or so I am assembling some of those recent random thoughts. Alan Watts on pain.
Continue reading "Random thoughts of the week, through May 20."
Friday, May 18. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Behind the glamor of courtroom drama and action is painstaking, dogged, and yearslong practice, preparation, and study if a lawyer wants to win. No matter how much a not guilty verdict is a rush, I will take my victories any way I can, including through the less glamorous approach of obtaining a pretrial dismissal through meticulous review of the applicable statutes and caselaw as they apply to the criminal allegations against my client. It appears that statutory language spelled the difference between James Kent's winning or losing on his convicted counts for child pornography possession from viewing child pornography images online. Although he did not win on appeal for all his convicted counts, he obtained an appellate win that boils down to the following: The question presented for our review is whether the evidence proffered at defendant's trial was legally sufficient to support his convictions for Promoting a Sexual Performance by aChild (Penal Law § 263.15) and Possessing a Sexual Performance by a Child (Penal Law § 263.16). We must consider, among other issues, the evidentiary significance of "cache files," or temporary internet files automatically created and stored on a defendant's hard drive, and the defendant's awareness of the presence of such files. We conclude that where the evidence fails to show that defendant had such awareness, the People have not met their burden of demonstrating defendant's knowing procurement or possession of those files. We further conclude that merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement within the meaning of our Penal Law. New York v. Kent (May 8, 2012).
Friday, May 18. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Yesterday I posted about the Baltimore cop fired three years after a civilian videotaped his misconduct, Coincidentally, a few hours after I uploaded the posting, I received this link on a lawyers' listserv to the Justice Department's detailed recognition (May 14, 2012) of civilians to videotape police in public. The eleven-page Justice Department position is addressed to the parties involved in settlement discussions in a lawsuit alleging that in 2010, "Baltimore City Police Department officers seized, searched and deleted the contents of [Christopher Sharp's] cell phone after he used it to record officers forcibly arresting his friend." I skimmed over the Justice Department letter. It is another weapon against continued abuse, arrest, and prosecution of too many innocent civilians shining a light on police actions by video, who are here to serve the public, and not the other way around.
Thursday, May 17. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Praised be the video technology that now makes it all the harder for rogue police officers to operate in the shadows. Praised be the people who boldly videotape those actions, including a friend of a skateboarder manhandled in 2007 by now-former Baltimore City, Maryland, police officer Salvatore Rivieri (video here). I can have compassion for Mr. Rivieri, just as it is critical for me to have compassion for all people and living beings. His conduct totally unbecoming an officer did not arise in a vaccuum. For him to have inflicted so much misery that 2007 summer day, he likely was suffering himself. Nevertheless, such behavior was so egregious, that Mr. Rivieri did not belong on the police force, not for purposes of punishing him, but for purposes of preventing his repeating his abusive behavior and to make clear to police officers that such behavior will not be tolerated. On April 27, 2012, Maryland's intermediate appellate court upheld the police commissioner's 2010 firing of Mr. Rivieri, finding no protection against the firing in Maryland's Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. Rivieri v. Baltimore Police Department, __ Md. App. _ (April 27, 2012).
Continue reading "Five years after manhandling a skateboarder, a Baltimore cop's firing is upheld. "
Tuesday, May 15. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com This video, which hit the Internet at least three years ago, is essential for convincing suspects not to speak with the police. Thanks to Regent law professor and former criminal defense lawyer James Duane for presenting the video, and then-cop/now prosecutor George Bruch for his candor about his techniques for getting people to talk. As underlined by the video, suspects cannot win talking with cops any more than a couch potato can score off Michael Jordan. Do not do it. Please circulate this video far and wide.
Monday, May 14. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com When I was still a law student in Washington, D.C., on the university campus I saw a police car with an arrestee stomach-down on the hood of the police car. I hoped that the hood was not uncomfortably hot. I regretted the suspect being subjected to such a public display. Right before the cop started searching the arrestee "incident to arrest", un-Mirandized, the cop asked if he had any needles or anything else that might stick the officer. The cop said he did not want to learn the hard way of any needles. The suspect said no. I never found out if the officer found any contraband on him. The whole process was moving so slowly that I moved on to my original destination, as much as I wanted to watch more, this having been the first time seeing an arrestee on a police car hood. Gene Watson, Jr. was arrested in Washington, D.C., for the jailable offense of speeding over thirty miles over the speed limit. The officer started searching him incident to arrest and asked Watson, un-Mirandized, what was in his sock. Watson answered that it was "some weed." Watson v. U.S., __ A.2d _ (May 10, 2012).
Continue reading "Unmirandized defendant convicted for telling cop "some weed" is in his sock. "
Sunday, May 13. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries. On my Twitterpage, @jonkatz5, and elsewhere, I sometimes jot out news items, legal ideas, and personal ideas of interest. Every week or so I am assembling some of those recent random thoughts. 4th Cir. reverses grant of summary judgment against Muslim inmate denied right to grow 1/8" beard. http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/116560.P.pdf
Here is the online detainee locator of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. https://locator.ice.gov/odls/homePage.do
D.C. Cir. in Watson affirms non-Mirandized post-detention answer to "What's in your sock?" question. http://www.dccourts.gov/internet/documents/09CM447_mtd.pdf Keep silent.
4th Cir. reverses gun conviction. With cops blocking D's car's exit and more, he would not have felt free to leave. http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/114268.P.pdf
The breathalyzer culture in DWI prosecutions is broken and needs to be abolished. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/settlements-in-lawsuit-over-flawed-alcohol-breath-tests-in-dc-dc-to-pay-20000-to-4-drivers/2012/05/07/gIQAKpTH8T_story.html . Blood is much more accurate.
Dronabinol is the generic version of Marinol.
CT governor expects to sign medical marijuana bill. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/us/connecticut-passes-marijuana-bill.html
Continue reading "Random thoughts of the week, through May 13. "
Sunday, May 13. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com The following blog entry is a re-print from the May 2009 original: Colman McCarthy put it well in 2003 when he said he will not eat anything that had a mother. Today, words praising mothers pour in from individuals and greeting card companies. How many of the same people speaking those words are going to eat mothers and their children today? Let us remember that each land, air and sea animal was born to a mother. Watch the bond between mammalian animals and their children. Watch birds making nests for their children, and showing them how to fly. Watch fish swimming together in schools.
Continue reading "Honor mothers and Mothers' Day by not eating them nor their children (May 2012). "
Friday, May 11. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Tibetan studies professor Ringu Tulku writes that the concept "that all phenomena are devoid of coming and going ... means that an enlightened bodhisattva sees the truth, the way things are... Although we see that others are suffering greatly, we know that their suffering is almost needless. They are not doomed to be in pain, because their suffering just comes from a wrong way of seeing and reacting. If they could see how things truly are, they would not suffer anymore. This is the understanding of an enlightened being." Ringu Tulku, Daring Steps Toward Fearlessness: The Three Vehicles of Buddhism at 58 (Snow Lion Publications, 2005). This is non-duality/non-attachment. When I focus on the road of non-duality/non-attachment, not only do I help myself, but I also help my family, clients, and everyone else around me in making the planet more uncluttered. This is the road of t'ai chi, focus, engaged living, non-attachment/non-duality, ho'oponopono, and abundance. If Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., allowed vicious injustices to overconsume them, they would have been derailed and debilitated on their roads to victory. My clients remain many who tell me weeks after the fact about the weeks of sleepless nights they have suffered, unnecessarily, kvetching, obsessing, and being overconsumed over their cases. When we win or get some other amazing victory, I do not tell them their sleepless nights were unnecessary. I revel with them in their victory, and hope to myself that this will help them be more in the present the next time they face adversity. With the path pf powerful simplicity and uncluttering, each new box of discovery dumped on me by the prosecution to ferret out needles in haystacks, each new seeming roadblock by an underhanded-seeming action by the prosecutor or an opposing witness, and each unjust-seeming ruling by a judge is simpler for me to handle as I remembere the core of the defense is a few simple ideas to help boil down the mass and complexity of law, discovery, issues, and everything else in the critical case. This helps me perform better and deliver better results for every client. By seeing all cases for their simplicity, I am more grounded and effective and persuasive for my clients and myself.
Continue reading "The power of simplicity. "
Thursday, May 10. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com In 2008, I urged criminal defense lawyers always to poll the jury in the event of a conviction. Jury polls might rarely turn up gold, but there is no harm to them after a criminal conviction other than the disenchantment of hearing "guilty" all the more times. Last week after visiting the criminal clerk's office at the D.C. Superior Court, I dropped in on a misdemeanor jury trial in progress, where the criminal defense lawyer is someone who at every turn encouraged me to go into private criminal defense practice when I was a public defender lawyer. He was trying a misdemeanor leashless dog case (jailable in D.C.) before a jury along with another criminal count. He is qualified for much more serious cases. Being on the court-appointed panel, he is eligible also to be appointed such minor misdemeanors as this one, as well.
Continue reading "Poll the Jury, Part II. "
Wednesday, May 9. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Many times I write about reversing roles with opposing lawyers, witnesses, judges and clients. It is one thing to understand that in the intellectual zone, but much harder to do so in the heart zone when the other person seems to be acting heartlessly, threateningly, and with the ability to inflict severe damage. Recently, for the first time in my twenty years of criminal defense practice, I witnessed a police officer advise a civilian prosecution witness not to speak with me. I nearly blew a gasket inside. I came close to asking if he wanted me to report him to his superiors for that (which I would hesitate to do with anyone merely for their words, the free expression fanatic that I am, but not as lenient when the damage is coming from a state agent). I remembered back to the compassion exercises my family and I were doing just two days ago during an amazing local gathering with Anh-Huong and Thu Nguyen. Anh-Huong is a niece of Thich Nhat Hanh and fully embodies his compassion, calm and peace. In the courthouse hallway, with my trial to be called later that afternoon, I thought fast, took off my lawyer hat, and interacted with the police officer more as a human to a human, eventually. I emphatically underlined to the cop: "You cannot tell him not to talk to me." The police officer seemed genuinely unaware of that, and curiously replied: "I can't?" I felt more calm at his seeming admission of not realizing what he had done was not right: "You cannot do more than telling him of his option to talk with me or not. However, he is clearly an intelligent man who already knows that and has decided to speak with me." The police officer caused me no more problems the rest of the day. He did not intervene any further between me and the witness, with whom I spoke further. The officer answered my questions without obstruction. My client walked out of court with a very favorable result.
Continue reading "Persuading through compassion. "
Tuesday, May 8. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com When a judge, during sentencing, starts encouraging a defendant to expand his or her horizons, and relates that back to the judge's own challenges as a youth, the hope is that the judge's sentence will be on the more moderate to lenient scale. Recently in court, I learned for the first time that a judge whom I have appeared before for years at some point around his college age was a pipefitter. One day, he was out in the rain doing that work while seeing people having fun inside the nearby building at a social club or country club. He figured it was time to make some changes, he applied himself more to his studies, improved his grades, became a lawyer, and the rest is history. The judge was talking to a college-age defendant who was working at a pizza restaurant, and encouraging him to learn from the judge's experience, about whether he might wish to go beyond the pizza experience. A key in life, of course, is to find joy and fulfillment in whatever we are doing right this moment, even if our job is not ideal (mine is). In any event, hearing the judge's story, while waiting for my own case to be called, provided me further insight into this judge for when I appear before him in the future. With this particular defendant, the judge gave a desirable sentence.
Monday, May 7. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com In sadly short intervals, a Virginia and Maryland prosecutor recently asserted before a judge during trial that my client did not talk before being in custody, and that the Fifth Amendment does not apply to pre-arrest situations. Clearly, the foregoing prosecutors could have correctly claimed that Miranda warnings need not be administered to allow pre-arrest statements into evidence. However, the Fifth Amendment applies both to pre-arrest and post-arrest problems. In any event, pre-arrest silence can be admissible for impeaching a criminal defendant on the witness stand. The use of pre-arrest silence against a defendant who did not testify is allowed in some jurisdictions and not in others. Miranda and the Fifth Amendment do not sound so protective when a defendant's pre-arrest silence can be brought in the prosecution's case in chief. Here is an overview of some applicable authorities on the use of pre-arrest silence in open court: - Here is a March 2009, survey of the federal appellate circuits' views on admitting pre-arrest silence into evidence for criminal cases. Unfortunately, numerous federal courts allow pre-arrest silence into evidence.
Continue reading "Prosecutors: The right to remain silent attaches before MIranda does. "
Sunday, May 6. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting relentlessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com On Sundays, I sometimes veer well beyond the law in my blog entries. On my Twitterpage, @jonkatz5, I sometimes jot out news items, legal ideas, and personal ideas of interest. However, it can be hard to view Twitter archives after a few weeks. Therefore, starting with this blog entry, I am assembling some of my recent random thoughts. - "[A]ll dharmas ... are but ... means & shifts around the Great Death which is 'our life.'" Jack Kerouac, Some of the Dharma. "Practice wishing happiness to all your friends, acquaintances & enemies. Not only does this awake a heart of compassion..." Id. "I always did suspect that life was a dream, now i am assured by the most brilliant man who ever lived, that it is indeed so." Id. Jack Kerouac engaged on Buddhism with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, among others. - "The thing wrong with the world is that people don't have instructions." Tadodaho Chief Leon Shenandoah - Watch out for feces in your chicken. - Boredom is not a choice. Thanks to associatesmind.com.
Continue reading "Random thoughts of the week. "
Friday, May 4. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz. Defending DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving, drugs, marijuana/medical marijuana/cultivation, sex cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Fighting tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com 
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. When I attended my first National Asssociation of Criminal Defense Lawyers Meeting in 1991 -- about to transition from corporate law to the Maryland Public Defender's Office three months later -- I wondered why so many highly talented lawyers there practiced drunk driving defense. I figured that more of them would be handing major felony defense. As it turns out, the vast majority of felony defense is handled by public defender and court-appointed counsel, as is the case with all criminal defense cases. Because driving is so crucial to so many people's livelihoods, a substantial number of people who qualify for indigent defense hire private lawyers. I point that out not out of disrespect to public defender lawyers, but as a reality. My own extensive defense of those accused of drunk driving goes well beyond economics to some of the cores of civil liberties, including the extensive Fourth Amendment violations caused by police trolling for possible drunk drivers, the shamefulness of a criminal justice system that punishes for blood alcohol levels as tiny as 0.08, and the shamefulness of a criminal justice system that annoints the error-ridden breathalyzer machines. Related to drunk driving defense in criminal court is representation of drivers at parallel administrative hearings that threaten to remove their driving privileges for long stretches of time. I recently won such a Maryland administrative hearing that sought to yank my client's driving privileges for four months for allegedly refusing to blow into the Intox EC/IR II breathalyzer machine. As usual, the opposing Motor Vehicle Administration sent no witnesses no lawyer on its behalf, and merely submitted documents mainly consisting of my client's signature agreeing to take the test, police officer's brief recitation of what happened on the scene, and the claim on the officer's report that my client provided insufficient breath to provide a result on the machine. At my client's administrative hearing, I pointed out to the administrative law judge that nothing in the evidence showed that my client intentionally tried to frustrate the breathalyzer testing process. Also, I pointed out that he could have been offered a blood test, which he was not, when he was unable to blow sufficiently into the machine. I won the hearing, with the help of Borbon v. MVA, which confirms that the mere inability to provide a sufficient breath is not enough to determine an effective refusal to provide a blood alcohol sample. Borbon v. MVA,
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