As one of North Carolina’s preeminent criminal defense lawyers, widely respected as a federal trial practitioner, regarded by judges and prosecutors as “always prepared” and diligent, Damon Chetson has represented more than 1500 clients in more than a decade of litigation throughout courts in North Carolina. From large multi-defendant conspiracies, public corruption cases, drug trafficking conspiracies, to notorious cases involving the abduction and torture of a prosecutor’s father, Damon is aggressive in the defense of his clients at both the trial and appellate levels.
A graduate of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and then as a law school graduate of the University of North Carolina, Damon spent three years in between at the University of Virginia where he focused on post-war German history. His Master’s Thesis was on the German Social Democratic Party in the after the fall of the Nazi regime.
Mr. Chetson next worked in public policy in Washington, DC and in Arizona, where one of his personal interests was the mass incarceration of individuals in the American criminal justice system. As a law school clerk at the Wake County Public Defender’s office in 2007, he located the alibi that proved his client could not have committed an Armed Robbery on Tarboro Street.
In the past decade, he has represented people accused of both misdemeanors and felonies, and is familiar to judges on both the state and federal benches as a diligent and articulate defender of his client’s interests.
