Former Banfield lead prosecutor breaks silence on citation for drinking in public, removal from case and what’s next
Eric Clingan, the former lead prosecutor who secured indictments for Brendan Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhães in the 2023 “au pair affair” murders in Fairfax County, Virginia, is telling his side of the story to WTOP, after being cited for drinking alcohol in public and later being removed from the high-profile case.
Clingan, 57, served as Senior Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney and had been the lead prosecutor shortly after Fairfax County police investigated a deadly stabbing and shooting inside Banfield’s Herndon home in February 2023. Eight months later, Brazilian au pair Magalhães was charged with shooting and killing Joseph Ryan inside the home.
“Initially, what we knew, we could prove was that Juliana shot an individual who was lying prone in that bedroom, effectively not in a threat to anybody in that room. And we knew that act was illegal,” Clingan said.
Approximately a year later, Banfield was indicted for aggravated murder in the deaths of his wife, Christine, and Ryan.
Prosecutors believed Banfield, who was having an affair with Peres Magalhães, had created a profile on a fetish website, pretending to be his wife, in an attempt to lure a man to the family home, so he could kill his wife and Ryan and claim he had interrupted a home invasion.
“Evidence was still coming in, it had been sent to the lab. Evidence had been sent to expert witnesses. And so even though we knew what happened, proving what we knew had happened was a different story,” Clingan said.
Last week, Brendan Banfield was found guilty of two counts of aggravated murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and child endangerment.
However, Clingan was not at the prosecution table during the trial. He had been cited for drinking in public, a Class 4 misdemeanor, in August.
As first reported by 7News, police responded to a call from an animal hospital in the 5000 block of Westfields Boulevard in Centreville. The caller told the 911 dispatcher that a man was “drinking beer and smoking cigarettes” in the parking lot.
Police body-camera video showed Clingan telling a responding officer that he was drinking a bottle of beer that was on the hood of his vehicle. An officer who recognized Clingan drove him home, agreeing to Clingan’s request that he be allowed to sit in the front passenger seat of the cruiser.
In October, Clingan’s case was dismissed, according to court records. Clingan said he wasn’t in the courtroom at the time, but his attorney, Christopher Leibig, was able to get the charge dismissed.
After having his case dismissed, Clingan said he was removed from the Banfield case on Oct. 25, 2025, by Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano
Why did it happen?
Asked why he was drinking in public that day on his way to work, Clingan said he had been dealing with increasing levels of anxiety brought on by his workload, particularly the Banfield case, as well as pressures at home.
“I got to a point where my anxiety level had gotten so high, I hadn’t even realized it,” Clingan said.
Within days of receiving his citation, Clingan said he went to his doctor and began speaking with a mental health professional to try to understand what brought him to that moment.
“I’ve actually been able to relive that moment multiple times, and learned so much about how I got to be in that position,” said Clingan. He said the therapeutic process helped him “be able to figure out when that anxiety level gets to a certain point and where you can step in and fix that problem.”
With police body-worn camera video playing a crucial role in today’s criminal justice system, Clingan was asked to describe what he saw when watching himself on video: “You recognize the reality of the situation,” he said, ruefully.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s a camera there or not, you want to be respectful and you want to be a stand-up guy,” in speaking with the responding officers. “You just want to comport yourself in a professional manner because these are people doing their job.”
Fired, days before trial
While Clingan was removed from the Banfield case in mid-October 2025, he told WTOP he was fired a few days before the trial started on Jan. 12, 2026.
Clingan said he was “wrongfully and unfairly terminated and pursuing litigation.” A spokesperson for Descano’s office confirmed the date he was fired but declined to comment on Clingan’s characterization of the termination, saying it was a personnel matter.
Despite being fired, Clingan attended the Banfield trial.
“Sometimes, for various reasons, the head coach is not on the sidelines when his team takes the field in a big bowl game,” he said “At the same time, you know, if you’re the head coach, that’s your team. You put together the playbook and you put together the team that is executing on the field.”
“You’ve still got to watch the game, that’s yours, you built that,” Clingan said. “So, it was very important to me to watch everything unfold as best as I could, since I was not going to be able to turn my attention away from something that I had such an integral part in creating, and making sure that justice was served in this case.”
What’s next?
Before his 25 years as a prosecutor, Clingan had been a defense attorney and public defender.
Now, he has launched Clingan Law, based in Fairfax, which he said will be predominantly handling criminal defense and DUI cases, using his prosecutorial experience: “I know how to build up a case, and I know how to tear them down.”
As a defense attorney, he said, “Your job is to make sure the government did its job correctly, and to find the faults that may exist in the government’ prosecution.”
As Clingan begins the next stage of his career at the defense table with clients, he said, “My job is to make sure that I can help them find their way and recover from any singular incident in their life that should not mar them forever.”