| MCLE Credit: | 5.0 (Ethics: 1.5) |
| Live-Interactive Credit: | 0.0 |
| VIDC Re-Certification Credit: | 5.0 Misdemeanor/Felony OR Mental Health (VIDC Information) |
| Price: | $279 (Includes a downloadable audio version.) |
| Viewable Through: | 08/31/2026 |
$279.00 (or 5 Bundle Credits)
A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay from the October 2025 webcast seminar, 2nd Annual Criminal Law Behavioral Health Symposium
Mental health is one of the most challenging issues in criminal law practice whether you are a judge, prosecutor, or defense attorney. It is important for each attorney to understand the complex, and sometimes sensitive, intricacies of behavioral health issues and related laws when dealing with clients and even victims. As laws catch up to clinical science, it is the practitioner’s responsibility to understand the science and stay current with legal developments. This seminar is designed to keep defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges up to date on behavioral health issues and concerns in criminal cases.
In recent years, the Virginia Code has changed to provide the legal practitioner with multiple tools in crafting a mental health defense: insanity, deferred finding, mental state without insanity. For the first time since 1980, statutory changes allow, and in some cases require, Virginia judges to consider mental health issues that do not rise to the level of an insanity finding in determining both guilt and the appropriate sentence.
This seminar provides a practical guide for the lawyer attempting to figure out how best to defend a mentally ill client from a competency determination through a trial strategy using the new code provisions. Sessions include:
Behavioral/Mental Health Legal Update This session updates criminal law practitioners on the most recent and important legal developments in behavioral health as it relates to criminal law practice. |
Ethics of Representing and Prosecuting Defendants with Behavioral Health Issues This session covers 1.5 hours of ethics as it relates to the intersection of criminal and mental health law. Topics include, but are not limited to, insanity, deferred findings for the autistic and intellectually disabled, and specific intent. Learn when and how to apply each through both a fact- and an ethics-based analysis. Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 (Competence), 1.2 (Scope of Representation), 1.6 (Confidentiality of Information), and 1.14 (Client with Impairment) form the foundation for any fact-based analysis and determination of a mental health defense strategy. |
Behavioral Health: A Practice Primer This session covers how to handle a case involving complex behavioral health issues from the moment a defense attorney first meets with his client to ultimate case resolution. Topics include competency, restoration, selection of trial strategy, and the roles of defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge throughout the process. |
Behavioral Health Roundtable/Behavioral Health Docket Session This session covers how repetitive incarceration and hospitalization can be avoided for the mentally ill defendant who repeatedly cycles through the system, and what alternatives are available for the defense practitioner, prosecutor, and judge. The panelists discuss what roles exist for state hospitals, community corrections, adult probation and parole, and sentencing mitigation specialists, what resources exist in the community, and how to select the appropriate outcome-based services for your client when one size does not fit every defendant or fact pattern. |
Hon. William E. Glover, 15th Judicial District, Circuit Court / Spotsylvania
Hon. William E. Jarvis, Prince William General District Court / Manassas
Elliott H. DeJarnette V, Commonwealth Attorney’s Office / Henrico
Kristen Durbin, LCSW, Forensic Services Program / Prince William County
Bradley Marshall, Vanderpool, Frostick & Nishanian, PC / Manassas
Annette Miller, Virginia Beach Public Defender’s Office / Virginia Beach
Jeremy M. Schreiber, Ph.D., Central State Hospital / Petersburg
Bradley Marshall, Vanderpool, Frostick & Nishanian, PC / Manassas
Annette Miller, Virginia Beach Public Defender’s Office / Virginia Beach
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