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Chris graduated from Falls Church High School in 1988, Georgetown University in 1992, and William and Mary Law School in 1996. During law school, Chris concentrated on criminal defense by clerking at the Washington, DC Public Defender Service (summer 1994) and the Whatcom County Public Defender in Bellingham, Washington (summer 1995). In 1996 Chris joined the Office of the Public Defender for Alexandria, Virginia. In 2000, he became a Senior Assistant in the Office until he left in 2002 to start his own law firm of Leibig, Moseley, and Bennett (originally Leibig, Moseley and Dillard). In 2005, the Firm merged with the Law Offices of John Kenneth Zwerling to form Zwerling, Leibig and Moseley.

Trial Experience

Chris has handled thousands of criminal cases, practicing exclusively criminal defense for fourteen years. He has tried more than a hundred felony cases and more than forty jury trials, including on charges of Capital Murder, First Degree Murder, Continuing Criminal enterprise Murder, Manslaughter, Rape, Sodomy, Child Sexual Abuse, Abduction, Robbery, drug offenses, and complex white collar crimes. He has won acquittals on charges of Murder, Rape, Robbery, Manslaughter, Serious Drug Offenses, and many others. Cases of Chris’ have been featured on Inside Edition (2006), Good Morning America (2008), CNN (2008) and The Washingtonian (2009)..

Chris has also handled hundreds of driving while intoxicated cases all over Northern Virginia.

Appellate Experience

Chris has argued dozens of cases in the Virginia appellate courts, including on issues of illegal search and seizure, habitual offender, disclosure of exculpatory evidence, the rights possessed by juveniles at probation violations, the “recent complaint” hearsay exception in rape cases, and many others. His victories include Brown v. Commonwealth, where the Court reversed a DWI conviction because the Commonwealth failed to establish the reliability of the breath testing equipment, and Pannel v. Commonwealth, where the Court expanded the rights of juveniles in probation cases all over Virginia. Chris has also argued cases in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on issues of DWI, Racketeering, Money Laundering, and others. Chris has filed two Petitions for Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, one in a murder case raising an issue of illegal search and seizure, and one asserting defendants rights in DWI cases on federal property.

Unique Legal Experience

DNA Evidence

Chris studied Forensic DNA typing at the George Washington University School of Forensic Science Master’s program with students aspiring to a career as DNA scientists. He has litigated the admissibility, reliability, and meaning of DNA in many cases, including Commonwealth v. Butler (show link), where the Court excluded the government’s DNA evidence from trial in a rape case. He has also challenged the reliability and meaning of DNA evidence in cases of Capital Murder, Burglary, and other sex serious sex offenses.

Forensic Psychiatry and Profiling

Chris studied Forensic Psychiatry at G.W. with students aspiring to a career in forensic profiling.

Warrant-less GPS Tracking

In 2008, Chris challenged the use by police of warrant-less GPS tracking, the first such challenge reported in Virginia. He conducted a state-wide project involving more than three hundred law enforcement departments to determine the scope of warrant-less GPS tracking in Virginia.The Virginia GPS tracking project was relied on by the American Civil Liberties Union in briefing the case of  United States of America v Lawrence Maynard and Antoine Jones in the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2009 (see brief).

Juveniles Tried as Adults

Chris has extensive experience representing teenagers charged with serious offenses where the Commonwealth seeks to transfer the juvenile to Circuit Court for adult punishment. He has represented young people for Murder, Rape, Robbery, malicious wounding, attempted murder, gang activities, child sexual abuse, serious drug offenses and other charges. In 2003, he has raised a constitutional challenge to Virginia’s “automatic transfer” provision on the grounds that the automatic transfer of teenagers to adult Court deprives them of the right to argue important mitigating factors, such as child abuse, learning disabilities, and immaturity. He has successfully argued numerous times that a teenager, even if convicted of a serious offense, should remain within the rehabilitative setting of the juvenile justice system.

Teaching

In 2010, Chris became an expert consultant to International Bridges of Justice, an international non-profit organization devoted to training public defenders in the developing world (see website). Among many other endeavors, IBJ conducts training courses for lawyers who will represent indigent defendants in China, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Burundi.

Chris was in Instructor of Legal Rhetoric at American University Law School in 2002-2003. He has lectured to criminal law seminars regularly since 2001 at George Washington University Law School.

In 2009, Chris taught a Continuing Legal Education course on the application of the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts DWI cases in Virginia.

Honors / Awards / Community Activities

In 2010, Chris became a member of the Board of Directors for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Virginia.

Virginia Super Lawyers 2010 – Chris was selected as one of the top fifty criminal defense lawyers in Virginia in any age group in an extensive peer review and evaluation process conducted by Law & Politics Magazine.

Virginia Super Lawyers 2009 – Chris was selected as one of the top fifty criminal defense lawyers in Virginia in any age group by Law and Politics Magazine.

Virginia Rising Stars 2007 and Virginia Rising Stars 2008 - selected as among the top 2.5 percent of Virginia up-and-coming attorneys in an extensive peer review and evaluation process conducted by Law & Politics.

Washington DC Area’s Best Lawyers, Washington Post Magazine, October 1, 2007 (Whole Firm Cited) -Lawyers are selected through a rigorous peer-review based on 2 million confidential evaluations by only the top attorneys in the country and thousands of telephone interviews. Best Lawyers has gained the respect of the legal industry, the media, and clients as the most reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals anywhere.

The American Trial Lawyers Association -2007, 2008 - top 100 trial lawyers in Virginia.

Chris serves on the Alexandria State Bar Fourth District Disciplinary Committee in Alexandria. He is also a member of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, a national group of attorneys and judges committed to bringing about a fundamental shift in our drug control policies

Small Local Business

Since 2002 Chris has served as General Counsel to Fit-One, LLC, a personal training company in Alexandria.

Since 2008 Chris has served as General Counsel for Berryville Physical Therapy.

Activities

Chris has two published novels including Montanamo released in February 2010 and Saving Saddam, published on October 15, 2008 in Great Britain by Artnik Books. He has three published short stories -- Coldcocked, Secret Admirer, Fly, and one poem, Quest for the Lionheart. He is also a contributing author to The Cynic on-line magazine and to Fault Magazine, a London-based culture and music magazine, where as he written on topics such as the American Presidential Election in 2008, Guns n’ Roses 2008 album Chinese Democracy, and The Future. Chris is also a contributor to The Examiner.com on Arlington Law and Politics.  Chris has also written political columns for AOL News, Forbes, Huffington Post, and Foxnews.com.  He has also appeared as an expert on national legal issues on Fox News and Washington’s 106.7 THE FAN, and in the Washington Examiner, New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, and USA Today.  He has been a legal expert on radio programs in New York, D.C., Montana, and Canada..