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…
Regardless of the size of your estate, or whether you even have an estate, leaving this world without a plan makes an already difficult time for your loved ones that much more painful. A poorly written or vague advanced directive may cause anguish and indecision for your family in your final moments. Dying without a…
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…
Last week, the Law Office of Chris Van Vechten had its 150th case dismissal: a possession of a stolen motor vehicle case. These are cases where Chris took the client to trial and received “not guilty” verdicts on all counts or via motion/negotiation in the pre-trial phase got all charges completely dismissed. Chris has successfully…
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…
2016 was a big year for the Law Office of Chris Van Vechten, marked by some dramatic successes both inside and out of the courtroom. The highlight of course was proving the innocence of a 15 year-old-client who was framed for bringing a loaded and cocked semi-automatic pistol to his high school, in a relatively…
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to represent many wonderful people in horrible situations, and too many of them I’ve represented multiple times. When I look back on the criminal history of these frequent flyers, it’s clear to me what criminal conviction turned them from law-abiding persons who made a mistake into life-long criminals….
As shocking as it may sound, many prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions will coyly use the carrot of a plea bargain combined with the threat of a serious sentence to get criminal defendants not only to plead guilty short of a trial, but also to have their attorneys forgo even investigating the claims against them. …
