[2][3][4] His father, David Henry Stahl, immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union; he served a term as Attorney General of Pennsylvania and was later appointed as a federal judge.

[1] Post-college he traveled, living in Greece—in caves outside of Matala, on Crete, the streets of Paris, then London, where he landed a job as a bartender at an Irish pub.

Stahl lost his job six months to the day after taking it and ended up on unemployment in California, alongside an escalating heroin dependency, which eventually led to his contracting hepatitis C.[6] He would go on to become a writer for the 1980s TV series ALF, Thirtysomething, and Moonlighting.

[1] In 1990 he would also write an episode each for Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure; his work on the former was described by series co-creator Mark Frost as "an absolute car wreck...

I, Fatty, a fictional autobiography of legendary movie comedian Roscoe Arbuckle received a favorable review from Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker and attracted attention from a variety of national media.

[10][11] Stahl has also written a number of CSI episodes which deal with transgressive topics and have been some of the most controversial but also gained some of the highest ratings.

[12] He introduced the dominatrix character Lady Heather, who has appeared in a number of episodes, the first of which, "Slaves of Las Vegas", featured viewer discretion advisory warning, due to nudity and sexual content.