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

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Christa Pike's botched lethal injection execution attempt and Donald Trump's recent order to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad have capital punishment front and center with the American public. Firing squad killing is visually gruesome, whereas lethal injection hides the torture suffered by the person condemned to the death chamber, except when the lethal injection gets botched, as with Christa Pike. Ms. Pike's lawyers told the authorities long ago that her narrow veins risked such a mishap. She unsuccessfully selected hanging instead. The death chamber proceedings grew so dire that she politely helped lead her executioners to workable veins. Having woken up post-lethal injection from unconsciousness in a hospital where doctors considered pulling life support, Ms. Pike now does not know whether her death sentence will be commuted or left for the next Tennessee governor to decide. 
To help people make up their own minds about capital punishment and lethal injection, Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz this week podcast interviewed leading lethal injection authority Corinna Barrett Lain, a longtime professor at University of Richmond Law School. Professor Lain opposes executions, says that clashes with her deep Christian faith, and emphasizes that state-sponsored killing puts a period before the deity's work has concluded with the executionee. Professor Lain's 2025 book Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection emerged from project abandonment when she told the deity that she would finish the book if he gave her a clear sign to complete the project. Professor Lain talks of lethal injection as hiding the torture it brings. She counters the arguments favoring making murderers suffer by saying we do not punish rapists by raping them, nor arsonists by burning down their homes. 
Why is lethal injection so often torturous when physician-assisted suicide can involve little to no pain? Lethal injection involves one-size-fits-all protocols without physician presence, whereas physician-assisted suicide has a physician involved every step of the way. The Supreme Court majority continues its green light for executions. 
Virginia is the first Southern state to join the many others that have abolished the death penalty. Federal authorities sometimes interfere with such federalism by pursuing federal capital prosecutions in states that do not have the death penalty. The practice of the death penalty has repeatedly shown itself to be racist in effect. Virginia abolished capital punishment after the commonwealth's death penalty defenders were so successful as to virtually vacate the state's death row. 
When Jon Katz asked prior podcast guest Douglas Ramseur for suggested future guests, Doug listed three people, including Professor Lain and her professorial colleague and former head indigent defense lawyer (and recent podcast guest) Dave Johnson. Read the lengthy 2021 law review article authored by Professor Lain and Mr. Ramseur entitled "Disrupting Death: How Specialized Capital Defenders Ground Virginia’s Machinery of Death to a Halt."
Praised be the effective and devoted capital defenders, who toil away to keep their clients off of death row, and humanize and care deeply for them in the process. That is the key to both capital and non-capital criminal defense. 
This episode is also available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-5_Xci45BQ  and on Apple podcasts  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christa-pike-and-removing-the-lethal-injection/id1721413675?i=1000793910401
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

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The Constitution's Sixth Amendment and its appellate interpretations provide for effective assistance of counsel against criminal prosecutions, regardless of the defendant's ability to pay. Virginia's public defender system delivers beneficial service, but the state's indigent defense system is broken when it comes to the significant percentage of court-appointed private-practicing lawyers, who are ordinarily paid too little to give full meaning to the Sixth Amendment, leaving a devotion to clients and not pay as the motivator for delivering quality defense to indigent defendants. 
Former decades-long chief public defender lawyer (at the local and then state level) David Johnson for the past several years has been a law professor at the University of Richmond. In this Beat the Prosecution episode with Fairfax, Virginia, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz, Dave tells it like it is, from how he provided great service to his clients (and then became a law professor) despite his far from stellar academic performance, to how nothing leads to beneficial settlement negotiations like being known to perform successfully at trial, and how to deal with challenging judges, hostile cross examinees, and prosecutors who do not agree to sensible plea deals. 
Dave also discusses the importance for law students to obtain practical experience and learning while in law school, and the impediment to a better law school system that is caused by the focus to prepare law students for passing the bar rather than focusing better on preparing them to perform well as lawyers. 
Dave discusses preserving the appellate record, avoiding getting consumed by anger at injustice in the courtroom, talking with criminal defendants about the advisability of going to trial when settlement negotiations do not justify doing otherwise, and persuading in court. 
This episode is also available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAuydXKfgLY and in podcast format https://podcast.beattheprosecution.com/2293867/episodes/19892065
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

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When Fairfax, Virginia, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz first attended taijiquan sparring / sensing hands / push hands summer weekend gatherings of students of great t'ai chi ch'uan teacher Julian Chu (a prior Beat the Prosecution podcast interviewee), he met today's guest Shyh-Ching Lo, M.D. Without an ounce of ego -- as it should be -- and full of generosity in teaching and sharing, Dr. Lo has taught and reminded Jon about the importance in sensing hands of timing, sensing, sensitivity, zhong ting (central equliibrium), and ward off/roll back/press/push (including an emphasis on roll back). Starting from Jon's first sensing hands round with him, Dr. Lo would point out "too late" when Jon would yield too late. Today, Dr. Lo very commonly advises to "give it away" so that the opponent has nothing to push against in the first place. Dr. Lo also points out to have one's hands and arms be powerfully light and soft. 
How does taijiquan tie in with Jon Katz's criminal defense practice? Taijquan sparring/push hands is like sparring in court many ways, to harmonize imbalanced situations, to use internal powerful energy rather than brute force, to uproot the opponent, and to be non-angry, for instance. 
The imporance of taijiquan to criminal defense and life is vital for Jon Katz. Practicing push hands on the weekends connects naturally to the push hands of courtroom battle and life itself. The week's courthouse push hands connects well with the following weekend's sensing hands practice. Vital to push hands is applying the taijiquan principles of relaxing and sinking one's body into the ground (and relaxing and emptying the mind of clutter), separating the weight, turning from the waist, keeping one's body upright, and keeping the wrists softly unbent. Practicing push hands checks how well our taijiquan form practice is developing. Practicing taijquan form prepares us for sensing hands practice. 
With light movements, Dr. Lo is able to put other practitioners, including Jon, off balance if their form is not more well developed. Taijiquan involves never-ending self development. 
In this discussion, Dr. Lo includes addressing not only his daily taijiquan practice, but also his overall health practice as a retired medical doctor. He immediately took to martial arts practice while in the Taiwanese army, then for many years practiced no martial arts, and finally in his fifties became a taijiquan practitioner learning from such teachers as Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo, Ben's student Julian Chu, and Ben's students the late David Chen and his wife Joanne Cheng. One can find Dr. Lo practicing taijiquan at the weekly Saturday 10:30 a.m. gatherings at the David Chen memorial tai chi court at Cabin John Park in Potomac, Maryland. 
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

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Life's twists and turns bring us to a plethora of destinations, byways, and discoveries by surprise, out of order, and at dizzyingly varying speeds. Who would have thought that my first law firm job would lead me to meet true believer criminal defense and civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies, via his conservative father (and my essential mentor) Irv Margulies (see his eye opening unglossed interview on his WWII combat experience in Germany) congratulating my transition to public defender work and happily telling me of his son Joe's working in the same field. 
When Joe and I first spoke in late 2025, he told us about his metamorphosis from his clients being a means to fighting the opponent, to his clients being the raison d'être for his work, together with his gift for being a great writer (with several published books). 
Now Joe is back, talking about his essential book available September 15, 2026, by Beacon Press, entitled Cast Out: A cure for a forgiving society in an age of incarceration. Having rivetedly read the Cast Out galley proof, I know my fellow criminal defense lawyers will find it a great read for humanizing our clients in the settlement negotiation, trial, and any sentencing stages. Remaining readers will find themselves on Joe's journey with several people who committed monstrous acts, but who still had or later developed essential elements of humanity, with some of them emerging into caring and thoughtful humans who seem to be the positive twins of their former scary selves. 
Joe aptly says "the other" does not exist, rather than just us. Monster humans are not reality, versus people doing monstrous things. He does not even except Hitler from this concept. Listen why. 
Joe begins Cast Out with an exploration of a January 6, 2021, defendant who pleaded guilty and later got pardoned along with the vast majority of the other January 6 defendants. In this interview, I tell Joe how one of my excellent taijiquan teachers was one of those pardoned defendants. After I sent this teacher a brief message about my concerns about that soon after the incident, I put that by the wayside, recognizing he was not the other, and that January 6 did not detract at all from his greatness and generosity as a martial arts teacher, with whom I continue to sense hands / spar and learn. 
Joe's book tour will for Cast Out is expected to include Busboys & Poets (I await learning the location) on October 11, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. 
This full episode is available on YouTube, podcasting, and Apple podcasts. 
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

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At the NORML conference around 2000, the Drug Policy Alliance's leader Ethan Nadelmann was entertaining, informing and inspiring the converted. At one point, he exclaimed along the lines of "I haven't tried that drug............ yet." That unleashed my laughter, coming from this well respected and effective leader to dismantle the drug wars and to replace them with lawful intravenous needle exchange, legal injection sites, overhauling the imprisonment system that made the United States a leading incarcerator on the planet, and more. 
Over two and a half decades later, Ethan this week interviewed with me on my Beat the Prosecution podcast, where among many other items he explains the importance for him of personally experiencing the effects of many of the drugs for which he argued to reform. How many past college professors (Elliott taught at Princeton) make such public admissions? That is his persuasive transparency at work. 
My opposition to the drug wars were a major catalyst for me to transition from a corporate law firm to criminal defense, where I have delighted in eroding the drug wars from my own corner of the earth, defending people charged with many other crimes, and constantly summoning the Bill of Rights. 
This interview with Ethan is a battery charger, with his wide-ranging energy, optimism, imagination, and ability to find common ground with even the most otherwise seemingly virulent opponents. With conservatives supporting the drug wars, he has found commonality in opposing civil asset forfeiture that relates even ever so thinly with allegedly illegal drug activity. With Milton Friedman and other free economy people is the aversion to the drug wars as a major socialist enterprise. Ethan has met with drug policymakers and enforcers in many parts of the globe. With tough on crime nations in East Asia and beyond, he has seen reforms that ease up on drug enforcement when that reduces the spread of HIV and AIDS. 
For criminal defense and other trial lawyers, Ethan's example shows how to persuade even with the otherwise most recalcitrant of listeners, with appropriate and genuine humor, humanity, and finding points of mutual interest. 
The work of dismantling the drug wars never ends. Ethan has been a major force in setting this movement in the right direction and inspiring its next generations. 
This interview with Fairfax criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz and Ethan Nadelmann is available in full on YouTube  https://youtu.be/MGm0wansD2g on podcasting https://podcast.beattheprosecution.com/2293867/episodes/19750008 , and on Apple podcasts https://podcast.beattheprosecution.com/2293867/episodes/19750008-winning-like-ball-of-fire-ethan-nadelmann
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