Any relevant evidence we discover against the specific  officer in your case can be used to your advantage in court. In cases where officer credibility is a major issue – where the officer has lied in a police report or … Continue reading →

 We all know the story. Either we haven’t done what the officer claims as the reason for stopping us or we know they are using whatever small infraction we commit as a reason to look for something bigger. I get … Continue reading →

This post provides an overview of the issues involved in your illegal stop and arrest in Ventura County. The sample motion illustrates the different levels of restraint on a client’s liberty and what is required for law enforcement to justify a … Continue reading →

Everyone who knows me knows that I love music – some personal favorite moments of all time Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Rampal at the Hollywood Bowl, Willie Nelson at Tahoe, Ronnie Scott’s jazz in London, Chris Pierce at Zoey’s in Ventura, The Eagles … Continue reading →

In many cases, much of the evidence is circumstantial evidence, making it susceptible to this instruction. As a defense attorney, it is necessary to both destroy and to create – to destroy the myth of unshakeable proof and officer infallibility that surrounds the prosecution’s case and to create a new way for the jurors to see the same evidence by bringing an alternate voice and point of view into the courtroom. Information which may initially seem very damaging when viewed through the eyes of the suspicious or biased, or terrifying strong and impossible to overcome when presented by only one side, has a way of melting away when subjected to critical examination – just like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. The goal is to get the jurors, quite simply, to believe that there is another possibility, one that leads them down the road towards innocence and not towards guilt. As defense attorneys, we want them to “look behind the curtain”, to look beyond first appearances and what is initially being shown to them, and to embrace the beauty and hope of our justice system, something which all of them at heart want to do.
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When you are charged with Domestic Violence in Ventura County, you need an attorney who believes in you and who will successfully argue all the areas of reasonable doubt in your case. Due to the unique and personal nature of … Continue reading →

As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” At The Law Office of Jennifer Zide, we agree that people should be judged, not by their … Continue reading →