A Damascus man accused of running down two Potomac men in December with his mother’s black Honda Civic — killing one and injuring the other — pleaded guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder and first-degree assault.

Fernando Josue Valenzuela, 21, faces 20 years in prison for the crime, according to his plea agreement. He could have faced up to 55 years if found guilty in a trial.

Valenzuela had gotten off work at around 10 p.m. Dec. 4. He and friends bought some Blue Moon beers and drank together, before driving to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant to eat, Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Nee said in court.

Witnesses told prosecutors that Valenzuela is “somewhat shy” when sober, but more combative when he drinks, Nee said.

The restaurant was closed, he said. Instead, they went to a 7-Eleven convenience store across the street, where they met Billie and James Genies,  two brothers from Tobytown Drive in Potomac. The brothers asked Valenzuela for a ride to Gaithersburg, and said they would give him and his friends some marijuana for the ride.

“Things between the young men were very cordial,” Nee said. “There was no animosity.”

In Gaithersburg, the men got out of the car near Lakeforest mall to relieve themselves, Nee said.

Nee told Judge David Boynton that as Valenzuela got back into his car, the Genies brothers began walking away, without paying Valenzuela or giving him any marijuana.

Valenzuela became angry and started following them slowly in the car, Nee said.

Valenzuela told two other passengers in the car, “I’m going to hit them. I’m going to run them over,” Nee said. He sped up, passed them and circled back around. Then, he swerved toward the brothers, and plowed into them near the entrance to The Avalon School.

Police couldn’t determine how fast the car had been going, but “the force … knocked them out of their shoes,” Nee said. The impact demolished the Honda’s windshield, he said, and dented its hood.

Valenzuela drove off, abandoned the car nearby and called a friend, who drove him back to Damascus, Nee said.

James Genies, 35, was knocked unconscious by the impact. After he woke up, he ran to his girlfriend’s house and called police, who found the brothers’ shoes, hats, and cellphones strewn across West Diamond Avenue near The Avalon School when they arrived.

Billie Genies was suffering from “massive trauma to his head,” according to Valenzuela’s charging documents. He died at the scene.

Rescue personnel took his brother, James, to a local hospital for his injuries, which were not life-threatening.

Valenzuela’s father, Edgar Fernando Valenzuela, said in an interview that his son called him around 3 a.m., shortly after the accident.

“It surprised me when they said somebody was dead. … I didn’t believe it at first. My son is a good son,” Valenzuela said.

His son, the second of five, worked full time in construction, as well as at Chipotle, while he saved to go to college, he said.

The elder Valenzuela said his son decided to plead guilty while in protective custody in jail.

“It broke my heart,” he said of his son’s decision to plead guilty to the charges.

“He didn’t feel good about what he did to the Genies family,” Valenzuela said.

Valenzuela pleaded guilty to the “depraved heart” version of second-degree murder, meaning he acted with “extreme indifference for human life,” but didn’t necessary intend his victim’s death, said Andy Jezic, his lawyer.

Valenzuela is in protective custody in the jail because James Genies is an inmate there, as well, Jezic said.

Genies was arrested in February in a separate incident and charged with second-degree assault, resisting arrest, and other charges, online court records show. He has a trial date scheduled this month in Rockville District Court.

His family members, including his mother and grandmother, declined to speak to media after Valenzuela’s plea.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for the county’s State’s Attorneys Office, said the plea held Valenzuela accountable for his actions, which showed “callousness and disregard” for his victims’ safety.

Valenzuela is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 1.

May, 2013

In Loudoun County, Virginia, the effective advocacy of attorney Jonathan R. Oates resulted in a misdemeanor deal with no probation, despite the allegations that his client had fraudulently taken over $20,000.

Despite the prosecutor demanding a felony conviction, crimina attorney Jonathan Oates was able to persuasively present the defendant’s side of the story, not the story of the detective and alleged victim.

May, 2013

On the first morning of a jury trial in May 2013, Criminal attorney David Moyse got all felonies dismissed in a home invasion armed robbery case in Montgomery County.

Moyse’s client plead only to misdemeanors with one year of work release, despite confessing to police that he had been inside the house at the time of the armed robbery.

Moyse’s investigation up until the night before trial revealed inconsistencies that led to the last-second victory for his client.

Lawyers long have used focus groups or jury consultants to try to find the perfect jury for their clients. Investigating jurors fell out of favor because courts were concerned with their privacy, experts say.

But as Wi-Fi has crept into courtrooms around the country, some lawyers are taking to the Internet, searching social networks, job sites or court records to weed out problematic jurors. Advocates of the searches say it ensures fairer jury panels. In at least one state, lawyers are encouraged to perform a search of court records to make sure potential jurors have not been part of a lawsuit.

But opponents worry it might be an invasion of privacy that will make citizens more reluctant to perform their jury service.

“I go wherever Google takes me,” Jezic told Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Jordan last month before jury selection for the trial, which ended in a hung jury. The case will be retried this year.

Jezic, or one of his assistants, would research potential jurors during “voir dire,” the portion of a trial when lawyers and judges question potential jurors about their backgrounds or biases before deciding whether they will sit on a jury.

“There are a number of thoughts I’ve considered since this issue came up a month ago, and I knew it would come up repeatedly until we get some guidance from above,” Jordan told Jezic, referring to rulings from higher courts. Jordan denied Jezic’s request.

If allowed to do Internet research in that case, “we might have exercised more strikes,” Jezic said. “We might have known more about people we did strike, and not have struck them.”

When the issue came up in a previous trial Jordan was overseeing, it struck him as being “totally inappropriate,” he said during last month’s proceedings.

“I’ve even raised it with other judges on the bench. … There seems to be, at least from a gut level, a mixed set of views,” he said.

Montgomery County Circuit Court judges, including Jordan, declined to speak on the record about the issue.

Jezic’s and Jordan’s dilemma is one that judges and attorneys around the country are wrestling with, where technology has outstripped case law, experts say.

Some think that Internet searches of jurors’ pasts could make them less likely to take seriously rules about not relying on outside information during trials.

Jurors usually are ordered to rely only on evidence offered at trial. They should not, outside of the trial, research the case or people involved online, or try to reach out to lawyers or witnesses.

Some people consider online research a “poor man’s jury consultant,” because anyone can use it to learn information about jurors, said Thaddeus Hoffmeister, a professor of law at the University of Dayton.

No national guidelines exist about using the Internet to research jurors, said Paula Hannaford-Agor, the director of the Center for Jury Study for the National Center for State Courts, based in Williamsburg, Va.

“It varies so much, state to state, and by judge to judge,” she said. Some states provide juror names in advance and let attorneys ask jurors questions directly, whereas Maryland has a stricter voir dire process. Lawyers receive the names of potential jurors the day a trial starts.

In Missouri, she said, a court rule requires attorneys to do an Internet search on whether jurors have been party to litigation. “If they don’t, they are prohibited from raising [the issue] on appeal,” she said.

“Missouri is taking a very much ‘the tools are available, and if you don’t use it, it’s your own damn fault’ approach,” she said.

“I do think that jurors tend to be uneasy about, concerned, they’d be Googled,” Jordan said during the proceedings in Montgomery County Circuit Court last month. The websites have information, some of it wrong, that people never consented to share, such as credit histories or employment histories, he said.

“There’s a real potential for a chilling effect on jury service, by jurors, to know ‘I’m going to go out to the courthouse. … I’m going to be Googled. They’re going to find all kinds of stuff on me,’ and it feels kind of uneasy, at least,” he said.

Jezic said he began searching jurors online in the past two years or so, since Wi-Fi came to the courthouse.

“Anything else would be less than thorough,” he said.

“I never asked for permission before,” he said. “For me, there’s Wi-Fi in the courtroom. The attorney’s allowed to use iPhones, laptops. … To me, it’s self-evidently permissible.”

Attorneys receive basic information about potential jurors, according to the Montgomery County Jury Commissioner’s office. That information includes their full name, age, gender, profession, city of residence, spouse’s occupation and level of education.

Attorneys submit a more detailed list of questions to the judge overseeing the case, who asks those questions to potential jurors, Jezic said. Lawyers also may ask follow-up questions, he said.

“Through those answers, we learn a lot more about those people,” he said.

Some would-be jurors, or “mystery jurors,” as Jezic called them, don’t answer any questions, and searching for information about them online can help lawyers learn more.

It also helps lawyers learn other details that might not come out in the judge’s questions, he said.

“If there’s somebody that contributes to a body of a neighborhood watch — that generally indicates a pro-law enforcement bent. … We may not know that unless it says it on his Facebook page,” Jezic said.

“On the other hand, [if] he contributes or is on the board of the National Association of Legalizing Marijuana, we’d want to know that, too,” he said.

Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said he knows of the practice but didn’t know of any assistant state’s attorneys using the Internet to research potential jurors.

“It’s only logical more and more people are going to do it — because the technology is there,” he said.

David Lease, another private attorney, said he has heard attorneys talk about using Google to vet jurors, but it would create more work.

“From a practical standpoint, you don’t even have the time to do that if you wanted to do so,” he said.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Andrew Jezic convinced a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge to give his client no jail, after the client was found guilty of Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana – a misdemeanor – involving a package containing 45 pounds of marijuana

He was given three years of probation and ordered to do a substantial amount of community service.  The no-jail sentence was handed down, despite a prior arrest of the defendant for the same charge.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Article Link

By St. John Barned-Smith,

At a bond review hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court Tuesday, a judge halved the bond of a man accused of child sex abuse from $500,000 to $250,000.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Andrew Jezic was voted by other Maryland criminal lawyers and judges as a member of the select group of criminal practitioners who comprise the Maryland State Bar’s Criminal Law Section Council.

This is the second time that Mr. Jezic has been elected to serve on this council of top criminal attorneys in the state. The Section Council meets nearly every month in various parts of the state.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Andrew Jezic convinced a Prince George’s County prosecutor in a statutory rape case, carrying decades in jail, to dismiss all felonies and all sex offense charges.

The defendant, who had confessed to the police, plead guilty to a misdemeanor, Second Degree Assault. As a result, the defendant got out of jail and was saved from certain deportation.

He is back with his family, who had nearly lost hope.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Attorney David Moyse got his client’s conviction for DUI dismissed on appeal, despite the client blowing NEARLY THREE TIMES THE LEGAL ALCOHOL LIMIT. Moyse’s tenacious defense led the prosecutor to dismiss all jailable offenses, allowing his client to avoid jail time, 12 driver’s license points, and probation.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Andrew Jezic convinced a Prince George’s County prosecutor to dismiss Armed Robbery charges, all felonies, and all gun charges, despite the defendant being caught nearly red-handed with a shotgun in his fleeing vehicle.

The defendant plead to Second Degree Assault, a misdemeanor, giving him a strong chance to avoid certain deportation that he would have faced with any felony or gun charge. He will be eligible for parole in one month.