With the coronavirus spreading across the globe, vulnerable persons should invest in a solid defense to protect themselves and their families. Luckily, few attorneys are as solid as criminal defense attorney Chris Van Vechten – and he makes his own hand soaps! The CDC recommends thorough and regular hand washing as the primary step individuals…
Probable cause for a warrantless arrest exists when facts and circumstances within the arresting officer’s knowledge are sufficient to cause a person of reasonable caution to believe that a crime has been committed. State v Huff, 64 Wn. App. 641, 826 P.2d 698 (1992). But in the context of warrantless drug arrests, the officer’s training…
The collateral consequences of conviction for a crime are vast, prolonged, and disproportionately crippling to low income communities. In the past 12 months, I’ve seen one person be denied entry into Canada because of a shoplifting conviction in 1978; another be denied the opportunity to be an immigration sponsor for his foreign bride because of a…
There are many times when the Department of Licensing will be called by the State to assist in the prosecution of your case, particularly for crimes like driving with a suspended license or operating a motor vehicle without an ignition interlock device. On the surface, these cases seem like slam dunks for the State. Here’s…
For practical purposes, an over simplification of bail jumping is merely failing to show up to court when ordered to do so. You don’t need to actually be out on “bail” to be guilty of bail jumping. Bail Jumping is one of the stranger and more abused offenses because bail jumping can constitute anything from…
In brief, here’s how jury selection works: Potential jurors are assigned numbers prior to entering the courtroom. The lower your number, the more likely you are to be picked for a jury because if you are not bumped for cause or a preemptory challenge, and if there are still seats on the panel and there…
Last year I represented an individual who was charged with 5 counts of drug dealing primarily based on evidence derived from a paid informant working with the Tacoma Police Department. The evidence against my client was so connected to said informant that we were not permitted to see any of the evidence against us by…
One of the great failures of the criminal justice system was the Sentence Reform Act, a piece of legislation designed to promote consistency and fairness in the criminal justice system by restraining the power of judges without taking any steps to restrain prosecutors and police. The basis of the SRA is the concept that sentence ranges…
In 2016, the Washington Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 in the Baird decision that Washington’s “implied consent statute does not authorize a warrantless search, and a driver has no constitutional right to refuse a breath test because such a search falls under the search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement.” The Court…
Last year, the Law Office of Chris Van Vechten represented a 22 year old client with no prior criminal history who was charged with stealing $5.99 worth of nail polish from a Walmart in Tacoma. The client didn’t even make it out of the store before security stopped her…so the merchandise was fully recovered and presumably…
