The Court of Appeals recently in IN RE KA (No. 10-FS-1614, Feb. 2013) reversed K.A.’s weapons possession charges focusing on the governing legal principles of convictions based on confessions alone and the necessary corroboration in support thereof. The Court reiterated the long established Supreme Court legal principle, which requires confession to be corroborated in order to “forestall convictions based on extrajudicial confessions the reliability of which is a matter of suspicion.” Essentially in cases were conviction is based solely on a confession, self made statement, the government is required to introduce substantial independent evidence which would tend to establish the
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Monthly Archives May 2013
THE DC COMPREHENSIVE IMPAIRED DRIVING ACT: DC DWI/DUI LAWYER
This blog highlights some of the drastic changes to the drinking and driving law in the District. The DC Comprehensive Impaired Driving Act of 2012 increased significantly (doubled) the penalties for drinking and driving and also increased the mandatory minimum sentences as such. Accordingly the first offense conviction on DUI/DWI now carries the same penalties as most criminal misdemeanors, a maximum of: 180 days/$1000 fines. The minimum statutory imposed incarceration even for the first time offenders was also doubles based on the blood alcohol level/content commonly referred to as BAC. That is a BAC of 0.08 or more is considered
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