A 24-year-old aspiring model from Washington DC has been charged in an unprovoked knife attack in Chinatown. Melodie Anne Brevard is charged with assault with intent to kill and aggravated assault while armed in the stabbing of 20-year-old Annie Ropeik, a Boston University student and intern for National Public Radio.

According to police, the stabbing occurred on a busy sidewalk at approximately 9:30 on the morning of August 4, 2010. Witnesses say that Ropeik was walking to her internship at NPR when Brevard ran up to her, screaming and stabbing her four times in the neck and back. Bystanders subdued Brevard until police arrived. While initial reports stated that the stabbing was the result of a dispute between the two women, police now say that the assault was a "random attack" that was completely unprovoked.

This is not the first time Brevard has needed the services of a DC assault lawyer. She received probation before judgment for charges of second degree assault in 2007, and in 2009, she was charged with assaulting a police officer. The 2009 charge was later dropped by prosecutors.

Charging documents report that Brevard has been diagnosed with Bipolar Type II Disorder, but that she stopped taking her psychotropic medication nearly a month ago. Ironically, Bipolar II is a milder form of Bipolar Disorder, which causes severe and abrupt mood swings from hypomania (extreme excitability) to depression. The prosecution and defense will both certainly pay close attention to Brevard's history of assault and mental illness at her trial.

This article is presented by Price Benowitz, LLP, a criminal and DUI defense firm serving Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia. For more information, please visit our Maryland Assault Lawyer or Virginia Assault Lawyer webpages.

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A recent crackdown on criminal immigrants resulted in the arrests of 87 people in Washington DC and Virginia. Two United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surges involving 70 ICE agents and US Marshals discovered 12 immigration fugitives and 75 other foreign nationals with criminal records.

An "immigration fugitive" is someone who has been ordered to leave the United States but remains in the country illegally. Six of those arrested will require a DC Federal Criminal Lawyer as they face federal charges for illegal re-entry to the United States after formal deportation proceedings.

Some of the immigration fugitives are subject to immediate removal; others have pending federal criminal charges for which they must stand trial prior to deportation.

The remaining arrested immigrants have either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. They are subject to losing their immigration status and being forced to leave the nation. Some of the criminal charges against these individuals include felony drug and weapons charges, DUI, and theft.

Ironically, just days after the ICE arrests, an illegal immigrant with two DUI convictions in the past three years was arrested on suspicion of DUI in a fatal Virginia accident that claimed the life of a Benedictine nun. The case raised questions about why the driver, Carlos Montano, was able to remain in the United States after it was discovered that he was in the country illegally and had multiple criminal convictions.

Henry Lucero, head of ICE's Washington DC enforcement operations, said of the arrests, "A top priority for ICE is to locate and arrest convicted criminal aliens and ultimately remove them from our country in a safe and humane manner. Those who come to the United States to prey upon communities ... will be prosecuted for their crimes and ultimately returned to their home countries."

According to ICE spokesman Cori Bassett, the recent arrests were the result of immigration enforcement focusing on immigrants who were already being investigated, and not the result of random sweeps.

This article is presented by Price Benowitz, LLP, a criminal and DUI defense firm serving Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia. For more information, please visit our Virginia Criminal Lawyer website or Maryland DUI Lawyers blog.

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Pomegranate juice maker POM Wonderful has become notorious for their litigation against competing juice makers, including Welch Foods Inc., Tropicana Products Inc., Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. (Minute Maid). Now, POM finds itself of the flip side of a civil case as the defendants of a lawsuit filed by their former attorneys at the DC based law firm Hogan Lovells.

According to Hogan Lovells, their Washington DC attorneys represented POM Wonderful for nine months during an investigation by the Federal Trade commission. According to the law firm, POM owed more than half a million dollars to the firm for legal services during the investigation. Because the legal bills remain unpaid, Hogan Lovells is suing POM for breach of contract in an effort to recoup their fees. POM, however, has retaliated with claims of "unnecessary and substandard legal services" and "exorbitant" fees.

In addition to complaints about their legal representation, POM aggressively sought to have court documents sealed, particularly those related to the regulatory investigation by the FTC. Initially, a DC Superior Court judge ordered that all documents discussing "pending regulatory investigations" be sealed. This prevented media outlets from revealing the name of the federal regulatory agency investigating POM Wonderful. The National Law Journal appealed the restraining order, citing First Amendment concerns. DC Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff first responded, ""If I am throwing 80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head, so be it." Many legal analysts reported that The National Law Journal's appeal of the sealed documents could begin one of the nation's biggest First Amendment cases. However, after an amicus brief supporting The National Law Journal was filed by media outlets including The Washington Post, The American Society of News Editors, The Associated Press, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, NPR, Gannett Newspapers, Dow Jones & Company, the Society of Professional Journalists, and The New York Times, Judge Bartnoff rescinded the order, allowing reports to identify the FTC as the investigating agency.

Attorneys for POM Wonderful also asked Bartnoff to lift the restraining order. A POM spokesman stated, "Although we believe very strongly in our right to keep confidential documents shielded by attorney-client privilege, we never intended our protected communications with a governmental regulatory agency and a private law firm to become a First Amendment issue."

This article is presented by Price Benowitz, LLP, a criminal and DUI defense firm serving Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia. For more information, please visit our DC federal criminal lawyer or Maryland criminal lawyer websites.

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