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Fairfax criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz named this podcast Beat the Prosecution in sync with his teacher SunWolf's watchword that reality is no obstacle. By shooting for the stars, great outcomes be achieved in court. Nonetheless, plenty of criminal defendants get convicted, requiring all criminal defense lawyers to be great at sentencing. 

Recently, Jon Katz's fellow criminal defense lawyer Bret Lee told Jon of his and lawyer Marvin Miller's Northern Virginia federal criminal defense client Felicia Donald, saying she was willing to be on Jon's podcast. Dr. Donald is a physician who in 2020 entered a guilty plea to one prescription drug violation count involving opioids and one health care fraud count. Despite the prosecution's request for a fourteen year prison sentence and to include obstruction of justice in her sentencing guidelines, Dr. Donald's legal team obtained a sentence that was half of that, and that avoided a finding of obstruction. 

Dr. Donald is Jon Katz's second former inmate to appear on the Beat the Prosecution podcast. A big difference between the two is that the first such guest, Susan Crane, engages in peace actions against armaments and military facilities, admits her actions and asserts their justification under international law. Most other criminal defendants, including Dr. Donald, never seek any prosecution nor attention to their prosecution. Where most convicted criminal defendants would prefer to keep a low profile about their cases, Dr. Donald does a big service to current and future defendants by here discussing step-by-step her oversight in not securing a lawyer before she reported alleged wrongdoing by one of her employees to law enforcement officers (LEO) and before she turned over her cellphone and business documents to LEO, how she chose her initial and subsequent legal team, how she weathered the storm of incarceration during the pandemic and found opportunities to help fellow inmates, how she witnessed seriously inadequate health care for numerous inmates and dealt with her own serious health issues as an inmate, and how she obtained a sentence commutation under the CARES Act. 

For this episode, then, beating the prosecution is about obtaining the best possible sentence and being as resilient as possible from the point of arrest to the time of release from incarceration. Jon thanks Felicia Donald and Bret Lee for joining him. 

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