McDanald, Kristen W.

Robert McCoid is an intense litigator with seventeen years of trial and courtroom experience concentrating heavily in criminal defense and civil rights matters rooted in excessive force and unlawful arrests.  He has defended nine murder indictments and dozens of serious felonies ranging from sexual assaults, robberies, gun offenses, malicious woundings, and drug possession and distribution conspiracies in State and Federal courts throughout West Virginia.  He has also defended hundreds of DUI, simple batteries, and domestic assault cases.  He is a proud member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the National College for DUI Defense, and the West Virginia DUI Defense Lawyers Association. Mr. McCoid deeply and firmly believes that the Bill of Rights in the United States is under attack by our legislators, the police, and prosecutors, and, unless vigorously defended in and out of court, our civil liberties will be lost.  This reason accounts for why he strives to challenge every premise of every piece of proof the government seeks to offer against our clients as it seeks to prosecute, convict and incarcerate them.  The right to a jury trial in a criminal case is the second greatest civil liberty we enjoy in this country behind freedom of speech and the press, and it must be exercised often or it will be lost. 

While Mr. McCoid does make time for a civil practice, including general personal injury work, his civil practice is concentrated on civil rights claims for excessive force usually associated with unlawful arrests.  Merely because a citizen is verbally assertive or has the audacity to challenge the authority of the police does not justify an arrest.  In his experience, police administrators generally do not discipline officers who engage in such atrocious conduct, so the only remedy with which citizens are left is to bring civil rights claims in federal court.  It is his great honor to use his talents as a trial lawyer to serve his clients by defending their civil rights and liberties in both criminal prosecutions and civil actions.