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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.
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.
Monday, April 23. 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 Without sexual freedom, our other civil liberties are not sufficiently protected. Around two months before I started law school, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to permit states to continue criminalizing sodomy (oral sex and anal intercourse). Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). That effectively exposed millions of people to prosecution and conviction. Seventeen years later, the Supreme Court, ruling 6-3, barred criminalization of consensual adult sodomy. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). Little did I realize before starting law school that the Supreme Court would even get in the way of consensual oral sex. By the time I read Bowers, I realized that nothing is automatically sacred at the Supreme Court.
Continue reading "Jon Katz interviewed at 2010 Woodhull Sexual Freedom Day"
Monday, February 13. 2012
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Two weeks ago, the D.C. Circuit Court affirmed the trial court's grounds for finding Abdul-Rahman Abdo Abulghaith Suleiman to have been part of the Taliban, in order to justify Guantanamo detention. Suleiman v. Obama, et al., __ F.3d _ (D.C. Cir., Jan. 27, 2012). In affirming the trial curt, Suleiman stated: Our task is to determine whether this undisputed evidence provides a legally adequate basis for the district court's conclusion that Suleiman was part of the Taliban. We have previously stated that "the purely independent conduct of a freelancer is not enough to establish that an individual is 'part of al-Qaida," and the same is true for being part of the Taliban. Salahi v. Obama, 625 F.3d 745,752 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting Bensayah v. Obama, 610 FJd 718, 725 (D.C. Cir. 2010)). But the facts here show that Suleiman was no freelancer. There is no dispute that Suleiman' s travel was initiated at the suggestion of and facilitated by a Taliban recruiter, and that he traveled a well-wo111 path to Afghanistan frequently used by Taliban recruits. We have stated that such travel may indicate that an individual traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban. See Al Odah v. United States, 611 F.3d 8, 14 (D.C. Cir. 2010) ("[I]nterrogation reports of a third party concerning al Qaeda and Taliban travel routes into Afghanistan . . . although far from conclusive ... suggest[] that an individual using this travel route to reach Kandahar may have done so because it was a route used by SOlTIe individuals seeking to enter Afghanistan for the purpose of jihad." Suleiman.
Continue reading "D.C. Cir. on determining who is part of the Taliban. "
Wednesday, February 8. 2012
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer, drug defense lawyer, marijuana defense lawyer, and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com Each year, the J. Franklyn Bourne Bar Association and Prince George's County and Montgomery County, Maryland, Bar Associations host a joint gathering during Black History Month at the Greenbelt federal courthouse. Beyond the sea of suits -- mine included -- greeting arrivals at these meetings in an expensive courthouse, came a great talk by Barbara Arnwine, who is Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a group that started after John F. Kennedy called upon the private bar to assist against racial discrimination, following the assassination of Medgar Evers, with Kennedy's being assassinated only months later. I first learned about the Lawyers' Committee when I was in law school, when Judith Winston of the Lawyers' Committee came to speak, with my later serving on the local ACLU affiliate Board with Judy, followed by her, along with numerous other ACLU folks, joining the Clinton administration. At my first law firm, I became the liaison to the Washington Lawyers' Committee, which has ever since been headed by the dynamic Rod Boggs. (My great admiration for Rod does not change my strong opposing, on free expression and First Amendment grounds, the Washington Lawyers' Committee's suing the New York Times over printing housing advertisements -- ads that I oppose -- that only featured white models). Barbara urged further progress with voting rights, which is covered on the Lawyers' Committee's website, and which issue also is covered in this New York Times article. She encouraged lawyers to help with a very time-manageable pro-bono opportunity for them, paralegals law students and activists to "serve as hotline call center volunteers on or before Election Day [and] participate in legal field deployments on Election Day to ensure the process is running properly." You can sign up here. In a room that included several federal and county judges -- who needed to hear about her following ordeal along with everyone else -- Barbara spoke up about how an apparently warrantless three-hour early-morning gunpoint police invasion of her home last November changed her life and her view of the criminal justice system, and she "had serious issues before" (with the criminal justice system, I take it). She said the ordeal -- which she recounts here on radio -- changed her life, and that the incident terrorized her, by her own Prince George's County police department. She said last month: "President Obama has heard about it and has e-mailed people asking 'What in the world is this?'" An ABA Journal report on the incident says: "Arnwine says police didn’t believe her when she identified herself as a lawyer, and they asked what law school she had attended. Arnwine is a Duke University law graduate. When she cited her Fourth Amendment rights, Arnwine says, one officer allegedly responded, 'The Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply here.'" Truth be told, the Fourth Amendment applies everywhere in the United States, at all times, and for all people. ADDENDUM: After uploading this blog entry, I found this ABA Journal article about a search warrant for Barbara Arnwine's home in Upper Marlboro (the address thereon matches the address on this Huffington Post link), and an arrest warrant for her nephew. The question still remains whether there was probable cause to issue both warrants. Also, police mistreatment of Ms. Arwine, who has been charged with no crime at all, is deeply disturbing.
Wednesday, January 25. 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 Four East Haven, Connecticut, police were federally indicted last week for systematically terrorizing Hispanics. The lengthy indictment is here, and follows two years after the filing of a pending federal civil rights lawsuit alleging mistreatment of Hispanics by the East Haven police department, and naming three of the four indicted police among the civil suit's defendants. As criminal defendants, the indicted East Haven police officers are presumed innocent. Sadly, if the allegations are true, this is another key reason why I urge to drastically shrink the size of the criminal justice system in order to have a higher quality criminal justice system that is less expensive, and employs the best candidates, and properly trains and supervises them, and appropriately rewards strong performers. We best shrink the criminal justice system by legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and gambling; heavily decriminalizing all other drugs; eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing; eliminating per se rules in drunk driving cases; and eliminating the death penalty. I grew up just twenty-five miles down the road from East Haven, but never got off the highway to visit there. Before learning of the chilling allegations in this indictment, I associated East Haven with the city's Foxon Park soda that is served at the famous Pepe's Pizza in New Haven. With this indictment, soda pop is the farthest from my mind.
Sunday, January 22. 2012
Bill of Rights (from the public domain) 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 Off come the shoes. Out come the lotions. Then come the line for those randomly-selected for a choice of invasive x-rays or invasive patdowns, and the line for those listed for always requiring enhanced security screening. That is what awaits people departing domestically and internationally from airports in the United States. On the way back to the United States from international departure sites, one's laptop and smartphone are at the mercy of seizure and review by U.S. authorities, so it is important to find a way to encrypt data on both, or else to erase the data and to find a way to get any new data to yourself securely for instance by secure Internet uploading. Yes, one could drive to avoid such airport indignities, but a car does not cross the Atlantic or Pacific, and U.S. Border Patrol stops -- often well inland from the border -- can be unpleasant. Train travel does not eliminate security checkpoints. Passenger ships across the Atlantic and Pacific are likely few or non-existent. Did George Orwell have any idea that his 1984 barely scratched the surface of then-approaching governmental incursions on individuals' privacy? Are we really any safer or much safer with such increased invasions of privacy, or have those wanting to bring down the U.S. government and U.S. society simply made the United States government into an agent for scuttling civil liberties, in the name of stopping terror?
Continue reading "The civil liberties price of air travel. "
Tuesday, January 10. 2012
Here is a chilling account of former Guantanamo inmate Lakhdar Boumediene, who, ironically, was a human rights worker.
Wednesday, December 7. 2011
Now it is time to release everyone else from the world's death rows. Abolish the death penalty now.
Wednesday, December 7. 2011
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 The unconstitutionally invasive airport full-body scanners are not only an affront to civil liberties, but also may pose a real cancer risk. Although disagreements exsit among scientists about how great is the cancer risk, according to ProPublica, a "study by David Brenner, director of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, estimated that as airlines approach a billion boardings per year in the United States, 100 additional cancers per year could result from the scanners." Rather than our facing a choice between cancer exposure from the full body scanners and invasive groping if the scanner is declined, let us raise our voices to reverse the civil liberties violations of such invasive airport searches.
Monday, November 28. 2011
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 Including while away for Thanksgiving, I missed the American Civil Liberties Union's assertion that the U.S. Defense Authorization Bill (at pp. 359-64 here) empowers the military domestically to detain United States citizens. Please urge your senators now to vote for the Mark Udall Amendment, geared to reverse such domestic military detention. Here is a petition with talking points. Here is more information related to the Udall Amendment: - The American Civil Liberties Union's view on the issue. - The White House opposes the detention provisions, but not necessarily for purposes of protecting detainees' rights. - Here is TalkLeft's November 27 posting on the issue. ADDENDUM (Nov. 30, 2011)- Sadly, the Udall Amendment failed 37-61. Please do not let your no-voting senators hide. Here is the vote tally. As the ACLU's blog says: "The next opportunity to remove the harmful detention provisions from the bill will be when House and Senate conferees meet in conference committee next week. If the conference committee fails to remove the detention provisions, President Obama should follow through with his veto threat." Please push them to remove the provisions that the Udall Amendment sought to remove.
Friday, October 14. 2011
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer, drug defense lawyer, marijuana defense lawyer, and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com George Bush I presented us with the "New World Order". In 1991, I joined the second Gulf War I peace march in Washington, and watched a brilliantly-choreographed, eerie and ominous procession of silent huge papier-mache-headed men in black suits, white shirts and black ties periodically and in unison spinning hand-held oversized new-year-style noisemakers while simultaneously bowing, under a "New World Order" banner. Marching along with me was a close friend, who remarked that a "suit" often is used negatively to refer to a member of "the establishment." It was eerie. It does not stop there. We have the secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance/ FISA Court, with their heavily-redacted court opinions. That is disturbing. Today comes a court opinion that at first blush seems completely secret, containing nothing more than a caption, the list of the members of the three-judge panel, and the following statement in large bold letters: Classified Opinion Not Available to Public Dhan Farhan Abdul Latif, Detainee, Camp Delta, et al., v. Obama, No. 10-5319 (D.C. Cir., Oct. 14, 2011). I was about to end this blog entry here, but decided to see the extent to which the rest of the court filings are secret. Some court entries in the case have redactions and some do not. This Latif case started out in the federal trial court (in 2004) and in the D.C. Circuit listing the lead plaintiff as Mahmoad Abdah in this Guantanamo inmate habeas corpus case. Accompanying today's D.C. Circuit's Farhan opinion is the Court's Order vacating the trial court's order to release Mr. Latif. However, the foregoing Order was only available by paying the online PACER system to display the case docket and to open the Order. As it turns out, the Latif opinion will only remain fully classified if the federal government's legal team convinces the court to do so. Today the Court issued an accompanying Order explaining that the Opinion is being kept classified until the parties have an opportunity to provide reasons why the non-shaded areas in today's Court's opinion provided to the parties should not be made public. I only found the foregoing Order by paying for it online through the PACER docketing system, whereas the only free online document in this case today is the one above stating "Classified Opinion. Not Available to Public", possibly because the D.C. Circuits website has links to opinions but not orders (other than to obtain them through for pay through the PACER link on the court's website). I suggest that the Court would have had the public better informed had it made a notation in its Classified Opinion notice that the court has classified the opinion pending the parties' opportunity to present arguments as to why the unshaded portions should not be made public. Here are some informative links and more information about this habeas corpus case, which started with twenty-eight Guantanamo detainees as plaintiffs, and which generated over 900 trial court docket entries: - The federal appellate docket. - The trial court docket. - The trial court's Order to release Mr. Latif. - Trial judge Henry Kennedy's Memorandum Opinion to release Mr. Latif. As an aside, Judge Kennedy is the first judge before whom I did a civil jury trial, in 1997 in the District of Columbia Superior Court. He was a pleasure to appear before throughout. If all judges had his kind demeanor and exercised his level of wisdom that I witnessed during that trial, we would have all the more justice in the courts. I am sure the jurors also felt Judge Kennedy's soothing and positive energy. - The habeas corpus petition that started this litigation.
Thursday, October 6. 2011
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer, drug defense lawyer, marijuana defense lawyer, and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com As I first wrote over a decade ago: How many people, when asked "What were you doing during [some major historical event]?" can only shrug their shoulders to say they missed it all, during the daily grind of work, the commercial monster, commuting, eating, sleeping, and beer? As to Anwar al-Alwaki's September 30 assassination at the direction of President Obama, the week was ending, the weekend was for recharging my batteries, and the week has been filled with court battles. I knew about the story, and I need to start blogging about it now, at least briefly. Mr. Al-Awlaki was an American citizen. Was he targeted mainly as an Al Queda propagandist? That would raise serious First Amendment concerns, by itself. President Obama claimed his role was more extensive than that, calling Mr. Al-Alwaki “'the leader of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula... In that role, he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans.'" My further concerns include: - When Osama bin Laden was killed, I raised important issues to consider rather than rejoicing over his death. The same concerns apply as to Mr. Al-Alwaki. - Mr. Al-Alwaki was assassinated by a drone missile inside Yemen, a country with which the United States is not at war, and a country whose leader, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, is far from a friend of human rights. Did the U.S. seek Yemen's pre-approval or post-approval for the attack? If so, and if that approval was gained, was that meant to blunt U.S. pressure for Saleh to step down? If such pre-approval was not freely and voluntarily obtained (from whom, though?), so much for respecting the sovereignty of other nations. - A drone does not have any intelligence to know whether it is hitting only the targeted person. Here, seven people were reportedly killed by the drone missile that killed Mr. Al-Alwaki. The Washington Post reports that among the dead is United States citizen Samir Khan, "the co-editor of an al-Qaeda magazine." - Consequently, the drone strike approved or ordered by President Obama thus far does not reveal that sufficiently extenuating circumstances justified the drone bombing, and it was a strike killing two United States citizens at that. If you feel that such actions are not going to threaten everyone's civil liberties -- including the right to a fair trial under the Constitution at the very least for United States citizens who allegedly commit crimes abroad -- think again. Thanks to Jonathan Turley for having blogged yesterday on this civil liberties angle, and to Ron Paul for having raised concerns about who is next on the killing list. - How much safer is anyone with Mr. Al-Awlaki's killing? Plenty of people probably are more than happy to fill his shoes. - Reuters reports on a secret U.S. government kill list. Just having learned about this list, I will look into it further. - Violence begets violence. Now is the longest that the United States has ever officially been at war since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. All this war against terrorism, in Afghanistan and in Iraq continues to kill and maim innocents among those who are violent themselves, continues killing and maiming United States soldiers, deteriorate our civil liberties, and depletes the United States treasury at the worst time considering that the economy is in the worst shape since the Depression. Whatever your view is on all this war activity and curtailment of civil liberties, let your voice be heard by the government and by those who vote.
Wednesday, October 5. 2011
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com 
Image from the Government Printing Office's website
Three years ago, Dick Heller achieved a smashing Supreme Court victory that gave real meaning to Second Amendment protections. D.C. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). Yesterday, Mr. Heller and other appellants lost a new Second Amendment litigation round 2-1 in the D.C. Circuit, ruling, among other things, that the District of Columbia's post-Heller legislation is constitutional as to its ban on semi-automatic rifles and a gun registration requirement. Heller, et al., v. D.C., __ F.3d _ (D.C. Cir. Oct. 4, 2011). Writing for the 2-judge majority is Judge Douglas Ginsburg, the same judge whose 1987 Reagan Supreme Court nomination at 41-years-old went up in smoke over revelations of his past marijuana use. Dissenting over the semi-automatic rifle prohibition and gun registration requirement is Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, appointed by George Bush, II, and having graduated from law school a year after I. Heller's camp seems well-enough financed to challenge the panel's ruling en banc, which I expect will happen. As to guns, I recommend that people voluntarily disarm now. By the same token, the Second Amendment has no meaning if people do not have the individual right to bear arms. The Second Amendment reads too similarly to my cherished First Amendment for the First Amendment not to suffer the more that courts do not provide such protection under the Secod Amendment.
Wednesday, September 21. 2011
 Death penalty: Always unjust Troy Davis's execution tonight continues the state-sponsored legalized murder machine called capital punishment. Too many years ago, we lost the Supreme Court's absolute voices against capital punishment (on Eighth Amendment grounds) from former Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan. This taped account by witnesses to Mr. Davis's execution -- they would have seemed to be government officials if not for the absence of a Southern accent -- is beyond chilling, which pales in comparison to witnessing it firsthand. I send my prayers to Mr. Davis, his family, the man he was conviced of killing (whether or not he really did it) and his family.
Thursday, August 25. 2011
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving lawyer advocating in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia, Rockville, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Maryland, and beyond for the best possible winning results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com While criminal defense comprises the bulk of my law practice, I also do First Amendment defense, with the view that government misconduct is better remedied by not only sticking to criminal defense. Before I started doing criminal defense twenty years ago, I already had gotten some great civil litigation experience at the first law firm where I worked, and got more civil litigation and civil trial experience at the last law firm where I worked before becoming my own boss thirteen years ago. Suffice it to say, plenty of procedural landmines and hurdles await those who sue the government over civil liberties violations. One of them is the Younger abstention doctrine, which generally closes the doors of the federal courthouse while state-level enforcement action is pending, thus leaving the private litigant to file suit in state court. Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), thus being deprived of having more than one choice of a potentially favorable court forum. Offsetting Younger, at least, litigants need not exhaust state law remedies before filing for civil rights relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988). Thanks to a listserv member for referencing Felder. Interestingly, Felder not only is penned by the late Justice William Brennan -- my favorite justice -- but Justice Brennan managed to get six justices to join him, including Justice Scalia, who more often falls in the Court's conservative camp.
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