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

Send us Fan Mail
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

Send us Fan Mail
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

Send us Fan Mail
To persuade others, it is important to transform oneself not only to their perspective, but their full being, feelings, relevant experiences, sense of place and even unsettlement, and thought process. That approach, with psychodrama (working out challenges with role playing, reverse role playing, and scene setting), is a big part of the Trial Lawyers College, which I attended for a full month, and which is featured in several of my Beat The Prosecution interviews. 
Anam Petit, with the Murray Osorio law firm, is the second former immigration judge to join me on my podcast, the first being my law school immigration clinic and class professor Paul Grussendorf. With Anam, I dig deeper into strengthening one's persuasion chops by seeing matters from the judge's perspective. 
Unlike most "views from the bench" programs I have attended, where the judges are usually restrained in giving tips to lawyers (for instance saying to be fully prepared and fully considerate of judges and opponents, rather than really letting their hair down),  Anam holds nothing back in sharing her two years of experience as an immigration judge (during the Biden and Trump administrations) and her perspective of the wide range of lawyering she experienced, including her frustration at the swath of lawyers whose work was subpar to the detriment of their clients, when her role limited her ability to help rectify the situation. 
Anam underlines the importance of getting one's persuasive point across succinctly, rather than through repetition or plodding. She talks about how she would assess the credibility she witnesses. Anam underlines how demanding was her full docket and about working through lunch and needing to be highly organized to keep up timely with her work. When lawyers and other litigants work with those demands, that can pay off for the persuader. 
Now back to private law practice, mainly representing individual non-United States citizens, Anam addresses dealing with the trauma of many clients -- as is often the case for criminal defense lawyers, as well as-- and the challenges of keeping a balance in one's life when individuals are relying tremendously on our delivering them great service, and in some instances hoping we will pull a rabbit out of our hats. 
Anam is frank about the need to overhaul the immigration judging system -- which heavily includes hearings where people risk deportation -- including to make immigration courts Constitutional Article III courts (like the federal District Courts and Circuit Courts) so that immigration judges do not feel their judicial independence threatened by risking being fired by the Justice Department -- that employs them, and perverts the process  by unabashedly characterizing such judges as "deportation judges" in their immigration judge hiring webpage  --for not pleasing the DOJ or presidential administration in general. 
In a predecessor interview with another interviewer, Anam addresses sticking to her oath at all times. The current administration terminated a slew of immigration judges appointed during Democratic administrations, and Anam was one of those so terminated after nearly two years. Notable is her lack of bitterness over that termination and the positive words she has to say about the people at the immigration courts who continue focusing on doing the right thing. 
Anam has been active with the public interest group Arrived (renamed from Asylum Works)  Donations can be made to that group at this link. 
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

Send us Fan Mail
Michigan lawyer Patrick Barone is the third Beat the Prosecution podcast guest who has both attended the Trial Lawyers College and been active with the National College for DUI Defense. Patrick for years pursued a DWI defense focus before attending the TLC, and then he jumped both feet forward into intensive learning and training with psychodrama -- which is a major feature of the Trial Lawyers College that has been covered numerous times on this podcast -- becoming certified in psychodrama after many years of devoting substantial time to this approach of psychotherapy and working out challenges through role playing and reverse role playing, and much more.  As his and his wife Elizabeth Corby's Michigan Psychodrama Center page says, Patrick is a Board Certified trainer, educator and practitioner of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy, which is no small feat to add to an already busy criminal defense law practice. 
Listen as Patrick addresses with Fairfax criminal defense lawyer Jon Katz how psychodrama can be used for lawyers to prepare their entire trial and courtroom presentations, and prepare their clients to testify. Patrick talks about the possibility of speaking from the first person as the breathalyzer machine in a DUI case, taking exception to the breath test operator who does not enable the machine to do its job properly by not inspecting the suspect's mouth for foreign objects, to preclude the machine from testing for mouth alcohol rather than deep lung alcohol. 
Patrick  tells of one instance about using psychodrama doubling to relate and connect directly with his client. He talks about using psychodrama on himself to work out his issues with authority, in order to unblock his challenging interactions with a judge he repeatedly encounters. He differentiates the difference between righteous indignation at a police officer during cross examination, and alienating jurors who do not perceive a justification to be indignant. He talks about advocating in the moment, and understanding others from their perspective and from putting ourselves into their shoes. 
Beyond all that, Patrick talks of pursuing a pre-med path in college and then retooling to be a lawyer over such matters as his strong support for a robustly protected Second Amendment. He repeatedly writes about artificial intelligence for lawyers. His AI substack newsletter is at https://patrickbarone.substack.com Each month, he and his wife hold psychodrama sessions. 
Patrick makes a good point that often the psychodramatists in the room are not lawyers, and the lawyers are usually not psychodramatists. He is both. 
This Beat the Prosecution episode is also available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPdJ-7Tf_Zc and https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/winning-by-integrating-with-the-moment-patrick-barone/id1721413675?i=1000783081810
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

Send us Fan Mail
Buddhist nun Venerable Thubten Chodron of Sravasti Abbey returns for a second time to talk with Fairfax, Virginia, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz, this time to discuss Venerable's 2025 book incorporating experiential stories from inmates, and also the beautiful artwork by many of them, entitled The Key of Compassion- Finding Meaning Where You Least Expect It.
The ideal for a criminal defendant is to avoid conviction and incarceration. However, judges and court magistrates do not always grant pretrial release, and not all convicted people avoid incarceration. Consequently, this is the second Beat the Prosecution episode that removes the mystery about handling incarceration, and focuses on keeping grounded and resilient while detained. The first episode on that topic was with Fleet Maull, a dharma teacher who served a fourteen year sentence for a federal drug conviction at the end of the twentieth century. By removing the mystery of incarceration, criminal defendants can be bolder and more confident in fighting their prosecutions along with their lawyers. 
Jon Katz first heard of Venerable Chodron from Rodger Kamenetz's The Jew In the Lotus (where Chris Berlin's description of the jewel in the lotus is "boundless compassion that is fully responsive to suffering and moves us to alleviate that suffering unconditionally and spontaneously as we encounter it" and where om mani padme hum apparently praises the jewel in the lotus). As it happened, when Jon first  invited Venerable Chodron to this podcast, she and those at her abbey were already very involved with helping inmates, and The Key of Compassion was already in the works. 
Jon Katz recommends donating to Sravasti Abbey's Prison Dharma Fund, reading The Key of Compassion and also donating the book to prisons and other detention centers, for the availability of inmates. The best way to learn how to donate spiritual books to detention centers is probably to contact the institution's chaplain. 
This episode is also available on YouTube 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