Hansen opens criminal defense practice on Culpeper Street

Business
By Bill Walsh
Source: Fauquier Times-Democrat
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 2008

The big questions

Eloquence is the stock in trade of courtroom attorneys, and a particularly important asset in criminal defense.

Peter Hansen puts the skill on display when it comes to addressing the big questions.

How does a defense lawyer sleep at night when knowingly defending a guilty person?

"I have just an amazing love and an amazing faith in our system of government and constitutional law," he explains. "I believe that when they set up our system, our founding fathers took the best of the existing systems from the mother country, and they took the best systems that they knew from history, and they came up with our system which requires, as part of our constitutional check on the power of government, that everyone accused of a crime has the right to present his case. It's really what sets us apart from so many nations in the world.

"In our system, no matter what you are accused of having done, the determination of how to punish or whether to punish is done in a courtroom by a trained judiciary with attorneys. That's what shocks us about the terrorists. They have a concept of justice, no doubt, but it comes down to kidnapping someone that they don't like, and killing him. That is completely the opposite of what we have. Everyone has the right to tell his story."

Like many of the rest of us, Hansen is a bit uneasy with how we have handled some of those alleged terrorists at Guantanamo.

"The crisis that faced our country as a result of the attacks of 9/11 were unprecedented, and clearly the government needed to apprehend the people responsible and to protect us from that happening again. It was new ground for our country, and I think that the concept of having a tribunal inquiring into the facts is certainly in keeping with our constitutional traditions," he said.

"There is a great debate on what degree of process non-citizens are entitled to when they are apprehended outside the borders of this country, and that is a question that scholars continue to puzzle over. I certainly don't have the answer.

"Over time, there is an ebb and flow in our tradition. But in the moment of crisis, sometimes the government needs to act in a way that best preserves the safety of the people.

"When the situation is restored to normalcy, or as close to normalcy as we can have in the post-9/11 world, the judges, the high courts, the Supreme Court, can take another look, a second look, a third look, to see if there are some ways in which the system can be even more fair, whether more process can be given.

By and large, I think the government has made the right decisions, and that our whole system of review is working. In any system where someone is going to be held, and whether to hold them or not, is a factor of human judgment, there is not only the possibility or error, there is the fact that error will occur, because no system that we can devise is perfect. It is always a tragedy, when an innocent person is incarcerated. Whether or not that has happened in Guantanamo, I couldn't say."

Hansen opens criminal defense practice on Culpeper Street

By Bill Walsh

Times-Democrat Staff Writer

Peter Hansen has all the appurtenances of the successful small-town country lawyer: a farm just outside Warrenton, complete with horses, cows, and "the usual variety of other farm animals," an office in Old Town, a wife whom he met while fox hunting.

But the practice he opened in a suite of offices on Culpeper Street in May has a twist that offers commentary on the changes that the country — and this county — have undergone in recent years.

A criminal defense lawyer who is fluent in Spanish, Hansen spends the majority of his courtroom time representing Hispanic clients.

"Anybody who finds themselves with a criminal complaint lodged against them has a certain set of circumstances that they are going to have in common," Hansen said. "Hispanic people also have an additional set of challenges which they face having to do with immigration."

Much of his work is in Winchester, where he practiced for several years, and in Prince William County, where there is a far larger Hispanic population than is found here.

"We are fortunate in this jurisdiction of Fauquier County that a person's immigration status does not really come into play that frequently," Hansen said. "In other jurisdictions, however, it can have a very significant effect on whether a person is granted bond. Increasingly, it can be very difficult to get bail for Hispanic people. That's a problem."

It shouldn't be, he added. "In my practice, I haven't really seen much difference between a person's ethnicity or nationality and the likelihood of flight," he said. "The vast majority of the hundreds of Latinos I've represented who have gotten bond have shown up, even in cases where their defense was ultimately not likely to result in an acquittal. Likewise, I've had numerous native-born Americans who decided, for whatever reason, that it might not be advantageous to participate [in a trial] at that time," he said with a laugh.

Though nothing like Prince William's or Fairfax's, there is a significant Hispanic population in Fauquier County, Hansen said, despite the common assumption to the contrary.

"Most of the Hispanic people in our community are likely to be employed as farm laborers," he noted; "we still have a fairly vibrant farm economy. I think by it's nature, our rural way of life in this county enable us to accommodate a broader range of people with less of the friction that you get in urban environments."

And, he added, in Fauquier "there are more positive diversions. People aren't congregating in the types of drinking establishments or clubs that tend to spawn a lot of behavior that is going to require the police to come and investigate. We just don't have those kind of things here.

"We are doing it right, and one of the reasons is, we are one of the most successful counties at preserving a traditional way of life. It's hard, but we're doing it."

A Navy veteran who graduated from VMI, Hansen earned his law degree from Washington and Lee University and began practicing law here in 1992 with former local attorney Allen Olsen.

"I took four years of Spanish in college, and promptly forgot everything that my professor attempted to teach me," Hansen said of the development of his legal niche. "But I guess it was still in there somewhere. I learned to pick it up again because that was what the people I was representing speak. In order to be clear and get facts and to explain to them what needs to be explained, there was a need to get proficient at it."

His son, Hansen said, is one of those fortunate people who pick up languages seemingly without effort. The pair often speak Spanish at home to hone their skills.

"I borrowed his texts from Fresta Valley and just started hitting the books," Hansen said. "I am not sure that there are any shortcuts for the average person to learn another language. The best school is just to speak it, and that's how you begin to learn the things you need to say."

For months, he recalled, "I was at that strange point in speaking the language where I could explain to somebody the Constitutional rights they have — the right to remain silent, the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to a jury — but I couldn't ask them what they had for supper."

Hansen's office is at 65 Culpeper Street, Suite 102. He can be reached by phone at (540) 347-0010.

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