|
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 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. "
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.
Tuesday, May 1. 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 To become a better lawyer, one needs first to become a better person. Therefore, becoming a better lawyer involves interacting with and learning from plenty of non-lawyers, rather than just from lawyers. One person who inspires me deeply on the road of persuasion and compassion is Sylvia Boorstein. Talk about someone who is completely in the moment, completely compassionate, and completely in her milieu. I had the honor of meeting Sylvia last September. When I spoke with her, she was the same gentle soul as you see in the video shown above. Deeply bowing to and thanking Sylvia Boorstein.
Monday, April 30. 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 dealing with my greatest professional and personal challenges, I often find that the path to the solution has already been on the pages of my blog or elsewhere on my website. Therefore, these are a few of my favorite thoughts: - Criminal defense is heavily about battling and nonviolent warfare, but of course not with brute force. As Master Kan admonished: “Avoid rather than check. Check rather than hurt. Hurt rather than maim. Maim rather than kill. For all life is precious nor can any be replaced.” - "Normally we think that if [our opponent] has 100 pounds of force or power, I better have 150. But then if I get 150 pounds of force, he may have accumulated more himself... So I need to reverse my approach. I need to take my own power down to 0. Then there’s no chasing or spiraling.” - Benjamin Lo
- Instead of escaping from or fighting fears, pain and suffering, know and engage them first on the path to the third way of dealing with them.
Continue reading "These are a few of my favorite thoughts. "
Tuesday, April 24. 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 Why do Democratic voters post-Jimmy Carter -- and except for his fellow folksy Southerner Bill Clinton -- repeatedly choose wooden presidential nominees who act so hyper-cerebrally that they cannot make much of a heart connection with the public? In 1988, Mike Dukakis was so overly cautious and cerebral that he bombed at a softball gift question to name a hero, instead saying that "some teachers" would be among his heroes. Al Gore -- who did nothing to pan his wife's humorless attack on rock music lyrics -- tried self-lampooning his wooden reputation, but I wonder how painful it was for him to do such joking. John Kerry and George Bush II were fellow Skull and Bone members -- refusing to divulge anything about the secret group, perhaps lest the group out them for doing so -- yet Kerry overfiltered his words while Bush II, for all his faults, could speak simply and without excessive filtering through the mind, whether or not he had the intellectual capacity to do so. Obama's public relations handlers tried turning his woodenness into an advantage by calling him No Drama Obama, which goes over like a lead balloon.
Continue reading "How can Obama or anyone else script their anger? "
Sunday, April 22. 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
Suffering is ubiquitous in the criminal defense work I do. My clients suffer with the burden of being prosecuted and with the consequences of any convictions and sentences. Crime victims suffer. Judges and jurors suffer when seeing violent and other disturbing images and when inescapably facing droning lawyers and witnesses. In early 1991, I felt suffering when I learned the Senate was debating whether to authorize George Bush I to go to war in Iraq, on the cusp of converting the Madison Avenue propaganda slogan from Desert Shield to Desert Storm. When my Saturday clock radio alarm alerted me to the debate, my visiting out-of-town friend and I hurriedly went across the street to the art store to get supplies to make antiwar posters, as we delved into being not-ready-for-prime-time demonstrators, when I was still at a corporate law firm with insufficient knowledge about the law applying to demonstrators' rights. My law firm at the time was only two blocks from the White House. The otherwise likeable lawyer in the office adjacent to mine had a yellow ribbon prominently displayed on his desk. I did not feel comfortable talking with anyone at the firm about my views on the war, and had no idea who might have been for peace in the Gulf. Fortunately, at lunchtime, I could just go to the nearby Lafayette Park, across from the White House, to commiserate with the perpetual peace demonstrators there. On one of my first visits to Lafayette Park during Gulf War I, I had a fateful meeting with Jun Yasuda, a nun with the Nipponzan Myohoji Nichiren Buddhist order, who is based outside Albany, New York. Knowing and learning from my friend Jun Yasuda has helped me reach quantum leaps towards more peace, optimism, t'ai chi, engaged living, non-attachment/non-duality, ho'oponopono, abundance, tailoring an immensely fulfilling personal and professional path, and self-actualization. I am not at all exaggerating.
Continue reading "Do a fake schnoz and fake glasses end all suffering?"
Wednesday, April 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 Numerous of my clients obsess over their criminal charges to the point of letting the charges consume their daily lives. Many feel shame from the charges and concern about bringing shame to their families with their criminal cases. Many urgently do not want their friends, family and coworkers to know about their cases, which are made harder to conceal when a slew of direct mail lawyer solicitation letters come through the door in response to their publicly-listed criminal charges. These feelings are real and I listen. Many of my clients already feel traumatized by the charges against them, and feel that it is all the more a burden for others to know about their cases. Many worry about how the criminal charges will affect their jobs, their immigration status, their student status, and other collateral concerns. Many do not like that their cases can be easily found through an online search. So I listen. And I do my best to help with their concerns. The best way I can help with her concerns is to fight hard and smart for the best possible results, to provide my clients complete empathy and compassion, and not to minimize their concerns. Nevertheless, I sometimes encourage them to be in the moment, to remember that there is only the present moment, and to add some appropriate humor. The present moment is all that is real, as illustrated by the story of the samurai who is unable to sleep after being captured by the enemy, convinced that he will be interrogated, tortured and executed the next day. An apparition of his teacher comes to him and reminds him that the now is all that is real. He then gets a good night's rest. He will be more powerful with the good night's rest than with a sleepless night.
Continue reading ""Is that so?""
Friday, March 16. 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 Preparation for United States Supreme Court oral arguments requires exhaustive preparedness. See how a lengthy moot court oral argument preparation helped make an important difference for Justice Marshall's presentation in Brown v. Board of Ed.
Wednesday, March 14. 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 Over five years ago, I wrote about Churchill's admonition to "Never give up. Never give in," as an ongoing powerfully peaceful battle call for criminal defense lawyers. Thanks to my brother criminal defense lawyer and fellow martial arts practitioner Chris Flohr for posting an article in 2003 (here at page 5), which I just found, addressing Bruce Lee's spin on Churchill's urging never to give up. Bruce Lee said: If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you would like to win, but you think you can't
It almost certain you won't.
If you think you will lose, you are lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will-
It's all a state of the mind... See the rest here. Considering the source of these words, they hold true substance for me as I continue battling on the side of the angels when I prepare for and go to court for my criminal defense clients. ADDENDUM: After re-reading the foregoing poem, apparently called the "Victor", I recognized that it rhymes, and wondered why Bruce Lee was going to take time adding rhyming to his thoughts, during breaks from martial arts. The authorship may not be clear. This martial arts page, and many others, list the author as C. W. Longenecker, which seems to be a pen name inspired by a long neck beer bottle. This anonymous online posting says the poem was in Bruce Lee's office. Another anonymous writer says the poem hung at his Hong Kong home studio, and is seen in 1973's Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend. The writer tried without success to pinpoint the poem's precise origins. The words mean just as much to me, though. Here are some more words of wisdom that hit home as I battle on:
Continue reading "Bruce Lee's take on "Never give up. Never give in.""
Sunday, March 11. 2012
By Fairfax County/Northern Virginia/Maryland/Beltway criminal defense attorney 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 Solo practice cheerleading guru Jay Foonberg implores lawyers not to quote fees over the phone, at least in my 1996 version of his book from before the days that a huge number of lawyers got their own websites and before Skype came on the scene. Foonberg figured that people are less likely to hire a lawyer who quotes a fee over the phone than in person. However, the reality is that plenty of criminal defendants are from hundreds of miles from my office, and many of them are going to choose their lawyer through a phone consultation. Consequently, for consultations that ordinarily are free with me in person, I usually bill for those initial meetings where the person is within an hour of my office, and usually do not bill extra when they are a further distance from my office. That approach tends to work well. It is always preferable to meet with my clients before they hire me, and certainly well before the trial date. However, for misdemeanor cases where my clients face little to no likely active -- versus suspended -- jail time if convicted, the motivation to meet their potential lawyer diminishes the farther they are from the lawyer's office, at least once the roundtrip drive is over a few hours. Nothing beats in-person meetings with clients and potential clients. The meeting assures that we are paying full time and attention to each other in a confidential setting. Warmth, reassurance, empathy, and difficult topics all are best expressed in person.
Continue reading ""You're easier to talk with in person than over the phone.""
Tuesday, March 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 tirelessly for the best possible results for his clients. http://katzjustice.com The three basics of effective trial advocacy, and persuasion beyond the law, are knowledge/intelligence/preparation, skill/experience, and passion/conviction. They all need to be synthesized into a harmonious whole. Passion, conviction, and persuasion are major hallmarks of the Trial Lawyers College, which I attended for four weeks in August 1995, ten miles from the nearest paved road. The college assumed that the attendees already had basic trial skills and experience, and, therefore, included a heavy focus on helping the attendees become better people -- and thus better lawyers -- by knowing themselves and others better, including through discovering and telling their deepest and often pain-filled stories; knowing how to relate and engage better with others -- as humans and not as overly-logical and intellectualized legal humanoids -- including through psychodrama; knowing and embracing the very depths and heights of their pain and joy; finding, expressing, and trusting in the power of their realness; and trusting their gut. It all makes sense. As with so many important life lessons, the foregoing is easy to understand, but profound to practice and apply. The TLC was a tremendous catalyst not only about how attendees approached their practices and lives from the internal being level, but also with how so many of them pursued major changes in their lives. Several divorces followed, as did several babies. Several attendees changed law firms or started their own. One, a hugger's hugger, won such a huge jury verdict, and collected on it, that he decided to depart the law practice and to focus on the rest of the journey of life. The TLC confirmed to me that I had been on the right path of following my heart and convictions, and not to conform for the sake of conformity. The TLC also confirmed that I needed to get back to private practice and ultimately to self-employment as the better approach to being fully self-actualized as a lawyer and person. Two years after the TLC, I returned to private practice from the public defender's office, and two years after that I became my own boss, and have kept the same boss since. To passion and conviction, I add taijiquan and spirituality, not of the touch-feely kind of spirituality, nor of any orthodox kind, but of the personal and necessary kind. Three of my key teachers on this path are Ram Dass, Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, and Alan Watts. All three teach mindfulness, which John Kabat-Zinn, in Mindfulness for Beginners, persuasively shows to be a bedrock of a life well lived, a wonderful antidote to feeling stress in our daily lives, and a practice that is entirely consistent even with the most mainstream-seeming of lives.
Continue reading "The three basics of effective trial advocacy: Knowledge/intelligence, skill/experience and passion/conviction."
Monday, February 27. 2012
Tuesday, February 21. 2012
 By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer fighting for the best defense in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for felonies, misdemeanors, and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving trials.
For me, martial arts practice -- specifically taijiquan -- is essential to my criminal defense and trial law practice. Mindfulness practice is essential to my martial arts and trial practice. With that, here is more of what I have learned about lawyers and judges involved in mindfulness and martial arts practice: MINDFULNESS - T'ai chi instructor Doug Noll is a "lawyer turned peacemaker". - University of Florida law professor Leonard Riskin directs the Initiative on Mindfulness in Law & Dispute Resolution. - Lawyer Stephanie West Allen advocates "Mov[ing]From Being a Mindless Lawyer To a Mindful Lawyer." MARTIAL ARTS Lawyers: - Two years ago, I blogged about three lawyers involved in the intersection between the law and martial arts. - Lawyers Victor Crawford and Leonard Kennedy inspired me on the taijiquan path. - Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Hobart writes on "Self Defense Law and the Martial Artist." - Recently, the Ultimate Fighting Championship filed a lawsuit over New York's ban on live mixed martial arts fights, claiming that the ban violates its free speech rights by the law's allegedly having been passed due to the sport's violent message. - Lawyer and mixed martial arts enthusiast Justin Klein runs the Fight Lawyer blog. - A year ago, lawyer Stephanie West Allen blogged about Elizabeth Bailey, a practicing Pennsylvania lawyer, continuing with t'ai chi and yoga at ninety. - Miami lawyer John W. Salmon "is a frequent lecturer on 'Appropriate Dispute Resolution', often incorporating martial arts and mediation techniques into his presentations." - Charles J. Bélanger calls himself the Shaolin Lawyer, and teaches Chinese martial arts. - New Mexico lawyer Robert Tangora "runs his own tai chi and Taoist healing arts school." - Lawyer Niall Yamane apparently veered from the practice of law to open his own mixed martial arts school in Alabama. - Bruce Ballai is a lawyer and is the "founder and senior instructor for the Omaha T'ai Chi Association." - Virginia lawyer and meditation teacher Erin Williams "holds black belts in T’ai Chi and Kung Fu", although I never heard before of any belts in t'ai chi. - Ohio lawyer Bryan Nace practices t'ai chi and bagua, and is an assistant instructor at the Center for Body-Mind Harmony. - Maryland-area acupuncturist/nurse/past lawyer Sherrie Trede Black practices t'ai chi and qi gong.
Continue reading "Lawyers and judges involved in martial arts and mindfulness. "
Monday, February 20. 2012
By Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer fighting for the best defense in Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond for felonies, misdemeanors, and DWI/ DUI/ Drunk Driving trials. Nothing beats quality, relevant practice to perform well on any particular stage or platform, whether it be the courtroom, public speaking forum, athletic field, or anything else. In that regard, by now I have defended around three thousand clients in criminal court over two decades, with over two hundred-fifty trials, with five trials alone in the last two and one-half weeks. Some of the details are here. My high comfort level in court and all other public speaking settings is enhanced by my experience onstage since the age of nine playing the trumpet in school bands and smaller groups, followed by performing magic shows for children's birthday parties, and appearing weekly with my former law partner for two years on our then-sponsored call-in show "Legally Speaking" on Spanish-language radio, and on television and radio providing legal commentary. Optimum physical health continues to be critical for trial lawyers, and everyone else. I derive ongoing trial advocacy inspiration from my trial battles and taijiquan sparring. Here is what I learned and recalled yesterday through the weekly, always-well-attended taijiquan practice led by megamaster Julian Chu: - Taijiquan emphasizes to me: Lose the ego. There is mainly no self. Engage without attaching. Be unattached without disengaging. Harmonize. - Taijiquan push hands emphasizes: Quiet the mind. Relax and include a focus on the tailbone during push hands. Give into the opponent to a point. Expand into the opponent. - Taijiquan push hands also teaches: Sense the opponent. Put your mind into your hands and everything you do. Make minor adjustments to win. Yesterday, one of Julian's students mentioned what he had learned about the interplay between the tailbone and taijiquan practice. Julian then engaged everyone in further discussion of the tailbone, including having one of his two medical doctor students confirm where the tailbone/coccyx is in the first place. He then demonstrated the difference between being easily pushed without adjusting the tailbone, and the greater difficulty in being pushed when properly adjusting the tailbone and being in a sitting posture. We then broke into pairs to practice this tailbone focus. My sparring partner and I each saw a tremendous difference between not focusing on the tailbone and then focusing on the tailbone.
Continue reading "Deriving trial advocacy inspiration from trial battles and taijiquan sparring. "
|
