Practice Areas

I primarily practice law in the areas of criminal and traffic defense. I began my law career as a prosecutor for the City of Petersburg in 1993 after graduating from law school at the University of Richmond. Initially, I prosecuted in traffic court focusing on reckless driving, driving under the influence, driving on suspended, hit and run and other of the more serious traffic offenses. During my first year of prosecuting, I also focused on juvenile court. Fortunately and unfortunately, many of the most serious cases proceed through juvenile court. There are murders, rapes, robberies, and sexual crimes involving children in juvenile court and often times the fact patterns that occur in juvenile court are the most horrifying. After about a year of juvenile and traffic court, I began to spend a great deal more time in Circuit Court, prosecuting felony cases. I am proud to say that I won my final 19 jury trials. Every single one of these trials was difficult due to the makeup of Petersburg juries and also that all jury trials in Petersburg were requested by defense counsel. As prosecutors we were dissuaded from asking for juries because they took up a great deal of court time and resources. Thus we had jury trials only on cases where the defendant and his counsel requested the jury, which usually meant a trial with a difficult fact pattern in front of a Petersburg jury.

During these five years of prosecuting, I also had the opportunity to special prosecute in Prince George County, Dinwiddie County, Chesterfield County, Colonial Heights City, and several more jurisdictions. Usually these opportunities came at the request of the judge or chief prosecutor in that jurisdiction. Usually, the case involved a prosecutor’s son or a judge’s daughter in trouble and the chief prosecutor conflicted out of the case and I stepped in. Anyway, these cases gave me the chance to get to know many of the key figures in these jurisdictions and that is why I now have thorough knowledge of so many courts and judges and prosecutors and police officers. The courts which I have thorough knowledge of and frequently practice in are as follows: City of Richmond, Chesterfield County, Dinwiddie County, Brunswick County, Henrico County, Hanover County, New Kent County, Caroline County, Spottsylvania County, Prince George County, City of Petersburg, Greensville County, City of Emporia, Goochland County, Louisa County, Sussex County, Powhatan County and City of Hopewell.

My practice in these courts includes a variety of criminal and traffic cases. I frequently represent people charged with: reckless driving, driving under the influence, speeding, hit and run, possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, driving on suspended license or revoked license, eluding or evading the police, underage possession of alcohol, dui second offense, felony dui or felony driving under the influence, Asap violations, felony assault of a police officer and many more. As noted earlier, I have prosecuted cases from murder to rape to robbery to possession with intent to distribute cocaine. I will handle these cases occasionally now when I feel the facts justify me in doing so. However, I prefer to represent people who did not murder their wife nor rob and shoot someone with a gun. I prefer helping good people who made a mistake and often times deserve some consideration.