Beat The Prosecution- Fairfax, Virginia, Criminal Defense / DUI Lawyer

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First Amendment FIRE Lawyers Harvey Silverglate & Robert Corn-Revere- Winning by staying true to our principles Feb 22, 2025

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One of the two founders of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- Harvey Silverglate -- figured the group might no last much past ten years beyond its 1999 founding. Instead, Silverglate, describes the group -- renamed Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression -- as having filled the gap that was left when the ACLU became more of a progressive organization and less of a free expression protector.
Fairfax criminal and DUI defense lawyer Jonathan Katz first met criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate over twenty years ago through their mutual membership in the Naitonal Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He met First Amendment lawyer Robert Corn-Revere -- now FIRE's chief counsel -- through their mutual membership in the First Amendment Lawyers Association, of which Bob is a past president. Both Bob and Harvey are CATO Institute scholars.
Jon Katz has advised a conservative student referred by FIRE, in his campus disciplinary proceeding when his private university trampled on his right to videotape a campus speaker and university-paid public figure when no advance warning had been made against such recording activity. Jon was also referred by FIRE to advise a state university professor whose First Amendment rights were violated by being suspended from his job due to an uproar by numerous alumni and members of the public after he appeared as an unwitting hotseat guest of the O'Reilly Factor (on which show Jon has twice appeared, and also has appeared twice on the Radio Factor.) Worse, the federal government zeroed in on this professor, and dragged him through a six month trial (which Jon did not handle) that resulted in acquittal on numerous counts and a hung jury (10-2) on some additional counts.
What becomes readily apparent in this Beat the Prosecution episode is that staying true to our principles helps criminal defense and civil liberties lawyers win in court. Harvey tells of the jury nullification that delivered him acquittals of around 30 people prosecuted for trespassing in the carrying away from the office of a Harvard dean in his chair, in protest over the Vietnam war, with the prosecutor then declining to prosecute the approximately 70 additional defendants. Bob tells about winning in the Supreme Court against a prosecution under a statute criminalizing the filming of dogfighting and other animal cruelty ("crush films"). Visit here to donate to FIRE and here to become a member.

This podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit https://KatzJustice.com or contact us at info@KatzJustice.com, 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text).
If you like what you hear on our Beat the Prosecution podcast, please take a moment to post a review at our Apple podcasts page (with stars only, or else also with a comment) at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beat-the-prosecution/id1721413675

Demanding fully of ourselves in serving criminal defendants- Senior Virginia public defender Michael Cash Feb 21, 2025

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In this Beat the Prosecution episode, Fairfax, Virginia, criminal / DUI defense lawyer Jon Katz talks with the fifth public defender lawyer to be on this podcast. Arlington County, Virginia, senior public defender Michael Cash is a true believer in his clients and his work. His successful law school application to the University of Virginia Law School proclaimed his goal to do indigent criminal defense work. His story is riveting, including how he does public defender work for his profession, and public defender work on his free time.

Michael recognizes that being a tireless advocate for our criminal defense clients can wear down the prosecution and bring us closer to successful negotiated case settlements. He enjoys creating and filing innovative motions that bring his clients closer to the yes of a desirable case outcome. Michael views public defender work as the greatest lawyer job. How many people say that about their jobs?

When Jon Katz was a public defender lawyer for five years in a neighboring state early in his career, he thirsted to meet colleagues among public defenders in that state who expressed a strong preference for doing criminal defense work. Usually he found that elsewhere, at national criminal defense lawyer conferences. Now, throughout Virginia are public defender lawyers and private practicing lawyers expressing that devotion.

Now, we need to narrow the gap in the pay and available support resources between public defender lawyers and court-appointed private practicing lawyers serving indigent criminal defendants in Virginia.

Winning while redefining what is victory: Trial Teacher & Asheville criminal defense lawyer Fredilyn Sison Feb 11, 2025

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"I lucked out with getting interviewed by a great host." Those are the words of this episode's guest Fredilyn "Fredi" Sison, upon speaking for the first time on a podcast.

Fairfax, Northern Virginia, criminal / DUI defense lawyer Jonathan Katz has known Fredi for years. Jon Katz and Fredi Sison are both graduates -- from separate years -- of the multi-week Trial Lawyers College, when the TLC was still at Gerry Spence's beautiful Thunderhead Ranch, outside Dubois, Wyoming, before the schism that led to the TLC's operating elsewhere. Fredi for years taught at the TLC, continues teaching at the two-week Trial Practice Institute of the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC) that Fredi and Jon attended in different years as students, and joined TLC grads Mary Peckham and Joane Garcia-Colson not only to organize women lawyer training and development sessions through the Three Sisters group, but also with Mary and Joane co-authored Trial in Action: The Persuasive Power of Pyschodrama(Trial Guides, 2010).

Fredi for years, worked as a trial lawyer at numerous public defender offices. She now is a solo practitioner in Asheville, North Carolina, primarily handling court appointments, not wanting ability to pay to come between her and her clients.

With the conviction rate being so high in federal court, Fredi redefines the meaning of winning, for instance when that means obtaining a partial acquittal, or working so hard on a sentencing that her client returns home that night rather than spending a lenthy time warehoused in prison.

Fredi believes strongly in the persuasive power of psychodrama -- which we covered in an April 2024 Beat the Prosecution episode -- and improvisational approaches. Her devotion to delivering great criminal defense is inspiring and infectious.

View from risking incarceration- Winning from the heart center- Peace & Plowshares activist Susan Crane Feb 06, 2025

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For the first time on Fairfax, northern Virginia criminal / DUI defense lawyer Jonathan Katz's podcast, we have one of his former clients joining us. Susan Crane has engaged in four Plowshares peace actions and calculates that she has spent nearly a total of seven years of her life in jails and prisons.

Jon Katz was honored to have co-counseled with Ramsey Clark and Anabel Dwyer in defending Susan, Jesuit Father Stephen Kelly, Elizabeth Walz, and Father Philip Berrigan in Susan's third Plowshares action, in 1999 hammering on two A-10 military aircraft, to convert them due to the depleted uranium missiles they were equipped to fire. Pretrial, Jon convinced the judge to dismiss the sabotage and conspiracy to commit sabotage counts against the defendants, leaving pending property destruction and conspiracy to commit property destruction counts, and an assault count against Susan that she got dismissed when the jury could not reach a verdict on that count. When the judge prevented the jury from hearing testimony from defense depleted uranium expert Douglas Rokke, the defendants dramatically shut down their participation in the trial.

When prosecuted, Susan and all other Plowshares activists admit her actions, but insists that they were necessary and permitted under international law. We hear Susan's lessons for beating the prosecution from her heart-centered, engaging approach that cares deeply about everyone, including those who arrest her. She was ready to share information about depleted uranium with a soldier who was exposed to it. When hammering on material at a Lockheed Martin facility, Susan's fellow Plowshares activist Steve Kelly suggested that the employee in the room call security, lest he face job repercussions otherwise. That employee whispered to them that their action was courageous, and a circle of employees arrived and observed their actions, without stopping them, until security arrived. That is engagement.

Susan is an active member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker. She has devoted her life to helping others, from peace actions, to Peace Corps work, to helping renovate squats. Jon encourages people to donate to a Catholic Worker center of your choosing. To donate to Susan's Catholic Worker center, select the Catholic Worker House- Redwood City box at this website.

This episode is also available on YouTube and Apple podcasts.

Decades of mindfulness & meditation practice- Winning by bursting with positive energy and focus- Jonathan Foust Jan 30, 2025

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Fairfax, Northern Virginia criminal / DUI defense lawyer Jonathan Katz knows the benefit of mindfulness and meditative practice to beating the prosecution and to living a great life. Jon Katz's main mindfulness practice is taijiquan / t'ai chi chu'an yang style short form (also known as 37 posture Cheng Man Ch'ing / CMC taijiquan). Jon has also been involved with lawyers mindfulness gatherings. Jon also benefits from the practice of Self Identity Through Ho'oponopono. This practice helps develop razor sharp focus, deep listening, and clearing out one's internal gunk. Right here in the nation's capital area are some great mindfulness teachers, including through the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Two of IMCW's best teachers are Jonathan Foust and his wife Tara Brach (on whose Finding True Refuge YouTube series Jon Katz appears in 2012), who teach and speak both separately and jointly.
Jon first met Jonathan Foust at the 2015 Mindful Leadership Conference in Northern Virginia, when Jon was taken by Jonathan's warm, soothingly bursting positive energy. Jonathan still deals with his own challenge with chronic migraines; hear in this interview how he handles it.
Early in this interview, Jonathan leads a great short meditation, focusing on the three approaches of focus, flow, and releasing. Everything flows wonderfully from there in this talk.
For over two decades, Jonathan lived in the Kripalu ashram community. He is devoted to helping others, and virtually weekly presents online mindfulness / meditation teachings, and also at times presents in-person retreats, including his Year of Living Mindfully program.
Jonathan here talks about persuading others through positively engaging with others and recognizing their unmet needs, and how criminal defense lawyers, criminal defendants and others can prepare ourselves well for the battle by going on retreat, which I view not only as daylong and weeklong retreats, but even micro-retreats during breathing pauses or longer.
You will thank yourself for listening to what Jonathan has to say. With the dana / donation tradition, Jon Katz recommends people to donate here to Jonathan.

Practicing law & martial arts- Winning with deep listening & calmness- My early taijiquan teacher Len Kennedy Jan 23, 2025

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Lawyers were two of Fairfax, Northern Virginia criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz's early inspirations on the taijiquan / tai ch'i ch'uan path, those being the late Victor Crawford and this episode's guest, Leonard "Len" J. Kennedy. Vic was an energetic and engaging lawyer, who early in Jon Katz's criminal defense career told about his years-long practice of this martial art. Seeking a personal breakthrough, a few years later, Jon asked Vic to recommend a taijiquan teacher.

Victor mailed Jon pamphlets about several teachers, including Glen Echo taijiquan. There, Jon learned from Ellen and Len Kennedy who met as students of Alice and Robert W. Smith, the first western student of Cheng Man Ch'ing, who was fundamental in bringing taijiquan to the United States and spreading its popularity for serious study and practice. Ellen and Len have also studied with Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo (who has also taught my later taijiquan teachers David Walls Kaufman and Julian Chu), whose local sessions I have attended several times.

Len Kennedy is a communications lawyer who became general counsel of Nextel and Sprint, and later became the first general counsel of the Consumer Financial Protection Board. In this episode, Len discusses how he has integrated taijiquan into his life and very demanding career, and how criminal defense lawyers and criminal defendants can achieve more by engaging in wise action rather than brute force.
Here are some great words of wisdom from Len to me and his other students during his teaching sessions: "No hurry, no worry." "When you are fatigued, do t'ai chi." How do you deal with change? Do you resist the change, or work with the change? When you are standing still, what is still moving? (Your blood, breath, heart and cells, for instance.) Separately, Len has said that internally, during one of "those meetings," the t’ai chi practitioner does t’ai chi, through relaxing and sinking into one’s chair or into the ground if standing.
Len says: "T’ai Chi is a skill, an art and a Way that promotes internal growth, sensitivity through development of the heart, mind and spirit. Practice helps us to 'become what we are' in the words of the Greek poet Pindar and a human being in the fullest sense in the words of Professor Cheng." He sums it up with: "Move daily, Breathe deeply, Live fully."

Advocating for immigrants: Winning with full client engagement & teamwork: Crimmigration lawyer and former immigration judge Paul Grussendorf Jan 17, 2025

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Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz's first client visit to a jail was with his law professor and immigration legal clinic director Paul Grussendorf. Jon Katz's first two trials were also with Paul, one a deportation hearing for that jailed client after he had gotten convicted for importation of two kilos of cocaine into the United States, and the other for an Ethiopian client who had found safe haven in Zimbabwe and then flew to the United States, when U.S. immigration policy disfavored forum shopping for safe havens and political asylum after already finding the same outside the U.S., even when escaping the then-governing brutal Marxist Ethiopian government (when the anti-communist-focused Reagan was president). In the silver lining department, Jon obtained political asylum for another Ethiopian client, who claimed religious persecution. Then Jon graduated from law school.
Paul has blazed quite a professional and personal trail, in documentary filmmaking before law school, graduating law school in his early thirties, becoming the immigration law clinic director soon thereafter at Jon's law school, becoming an immigration judge, becoming an asylum officer, and working in other areas of asylum and refugee matters. Like Jon Katz, Paul believes in fully getting to know our clients to effectively represent them.
In this podcast episode, Paul includes crimmigration issues, and the importance for criminal defense lawyers to have sufficient relevant immigration law knowledge or else to obtain advice from competent immigration lawyers. Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010).
Read Paul's My Trials: Inside America's Deportation Factories, available in paperback and Kindle. Under the pen name Jonathan Worlde, he authored the fictitious Deep in the Cut.

Whale Wars' Paul Watson: Winning with Courage, Passion and Imagination Jan 08, 2025

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In mid-December 2024, Denmark released Captain Paul Watson (co-founder of Greenpeace, and founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) after five months of captivity in an apartment-like incarceration setting in Greenland, when Denmark ultimately declined to extradite him to Japan for a matter about which Captain Watson asserts his innocence.
Three weeks after Captain Watson's release, Fairfax, Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz had the privilege to spend an hour with him on our Beat the Prosecution podcast, covering such topics as risking detention and prosecution for what we deeply believe in; the international law limiting whaling and sealing; preparing for and winning at trial (he has never been convicted); and his uncanny ability to be non-angry.
Remarkable is Paul's confirmation that he does not get angry, other than when he expresses it with his pen. Non-anger is very vital to beating the prosecution. Paul has been prosecuted numerous times, but all his trials have resulted in acquittals. Listen to how that resulted.
Paul Watson and Jon Katz both eat vegan (with Paul motivated heavily by ecological reasons, and Jon being primarily motivated by nonviolence), and know members of the American Indian Movement (with Paul having been a medic during the Wounded Knee action, and Jon peripherally meeting AIM members through his peace teacher Jun Yasuda, a close friend and supporter of the late Dennis Banks).
Jon recommends reading Paul's autobiography Hitman for the Kindness Club, and listening to his podcast entitled Captain Paul Watson Foundation. More about Paul and his foundation's work is at PaulWatsonFoundation.org. Watson is one of the films about him. Donations to his foundation can be made here.
One of Paul's previous organization's ships was named the Steve Irwin, who supported Paul's approach for animals. Those approaches include ramming whaling ships without causing injury to others, applying dye to seals to make their skins unmarketable, using stink bombs, and releasing animals from captivity.
Paul magnificently sums up his work with this phrase that also is all about how to beat the prosecution: courage, passion and imagination. See this podcast also on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9jx0y141I4

Marijuana battles as incentives for winning- NORML founder Keith Stroup & political director Morgan Fox Dec 30, 2024

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Marijuana in large part accelerated Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz's transition from working at a corporate law firm to becoming a criminal defense lawyer many years ago. Jon Katz one day read about a federal prosecutor's issuance of a subpoena for High Times Magazine's advertiser records. Jon figured that the prosecutor was going after customers of hydroponic indoor marijuana growers. In protest, Jon took out a subscription to High Times, and told the same by letter to the then-federal attorney general and High Times. As a result of that subscription, Jon learned about criminal defense lawyer Don Fiedler, who was then national director of NORML, who helped Jon steer his path towards criminal defense.

In rapid order, Jon joined the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and met its then-executive director Keith Stroup. the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which is devoted to marijuana consumers, rather than to manufacturers and sellers. Jon had previously read the authorized NORML biography High in America, and has been fascinated by Keith's story. Keith has for many years been back with NORML, where he is current legal counsel.

The story of marijuana legalization and decriminalization provides strong lessons for criminal defense lawyers and their clients, about perseverance, team building and reversing roles. Marijuana remains criminalized at the federal level, but its odor is no longer a basis under Virginia law for a police search, and possession of designated amounts is no longer an offense in Virginia, which still needs legalized retail sales beyond medicinal sales. Many marijuana reformers have worked tirelessly and creatively over the decades to get us to where we are now. The team building involved in obtaining marijuana reform goes well beyond so-called political progressives. The reversing roles looks at what makes politicians and other policymakers tick for no longer demonizing marijuana.

On this episode of Beat the Prosecution, Jon welcomes Keith Stroup and NORML political director Morgan Fox, for an eye-opening look at how far marijuana reform has come and what still needs to be done. Jon believes strongly in decriminalizing all drugs, as well.

For more information about NORML and how to join and donate to the group, visit NORML.org.

This episode is on YouTube https://youtu.be/x96HC3YUQn8 and Apple podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beat-the-prosecution-fairfax-virginia-criminal/id1721413675?i=1000682118446

Overlap between emergency room physicians & criminal defense lawyers- Winning through resilience, internal strengthening & developed perception: Zen priest Wendy Lau, M.D. Dec 20, 2024

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Great criminal defense is like delivering clients excellent results while balanced on a pinnacle thousands of feet above the ground below. For that reason, Fairfax criminal / Virginia DUI attorney Jon Katz has invited Zen priest and former New York City emergency room physician Wendy Dainin Lau, M.D., who went from computer technology to medical school, and, after burnout, to the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe.
Effective criminal defense lawyers in so many ways are like emergency room physicians, single-mindedly reaching out to their patients as verbal bows and arrows can be flying -- or seem to be flying -- from all directions. Sensei Wendy has experienced having one patient die, only to still have a roster of other patients to help in the very next moment. She repeatedly takes on the treacherous journey to provide highly needed free healthcare to people in remote areas of Nepal. A recent documentary on that Nomads Clinic work -- Into the Heart of the Mountain -- is available here.
Wendy teaches the practice of G.R.A.C.E.- Gathering attention, Recalling intention, Attuning to self and others, Considering what will serve, Engaging and ending.
Physicians and everyone else will benefit from Wendy's Inner Practice of Medicine book. Wendy welcomes donations to the Upaya Zen scholarship fund bearing her name.

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