In our state, drug-related offenses are often called VUCSA, which is Violation of the Uniform Controlled Substance Act. A VUCSA felony is a felony-level drug crime. Most VUCSA crimes get charged as felonies. Your most pressing concerns when charged with a VUCSA felony are trying to get the charge dismissed or reduced to a misdemeanor. […]

Embezzlement is a type of theft in Washington state. Although embezzlement is not like a simple purse snatching, they both fall under the same category, so they can have similar penalties, depending on the degree of the offense. Taking someone else’s property, whether by the use of physical force or exerting unauthorized means to appropriate […]

It is every doctor’s nightmare to get falsely accused by a patient of something shocking that destroys your reputation. No matter how innocent you are, there will always be some people who will assume that “where there is smoke, there is fire.” The worst thing to do is to assume that everything will work out […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is going after people who committed loan fraud when applying for or using Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds that were intended to keep our economy from collapsing during the dark, early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Law enforcement estimates that hundreds of millions of dollars of PPP funds were obtained […]

People often panic when they receive a “target letter” from the Department of Justice, and rightly so. If you get one, you will need to know the legal implications of a target letter and what to do after receiving one.  A Washington criminal defense attorney can protect your legal rights and aggressively defend you. Let’s […]

Protection order cases arise out of a civil case and there is a Petitioner and a Respondent. When a protection order is granted, it is simply an order, not a criminal conviction.  However, if the order is then violated, that violation of the order is a crime that can be prosecuted. When a criminal case is […]

The label applied to the three levels of police encounters with individuals will determine the constitutional rights of the persons being stopped or detained. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches of their persons, houses, papers, and belongings by the government. A search warrant must be supported by sworn allegations of probable cause and […]

DNA testing is a double-edged sword. Law enforcement has solved countless cold cases as well as current cases based on DNA evidence. The problem arises from the fact that, like almost everything, DNA testing is not 100% reliable. A miscarriage of justice can result when someone gets wrongfully convicted based on incorrect DNA results or […]

You might have thought that you were merely expressing yourself and your opinions online, and then someone accused you of harassment and took you to court, seeking an anti-harassment order. What happened to the 1st Amendment freedom of speech? The 1st Amendment does protect a lot of speech. One’s speech has to cross the line […]