Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Melendez-Diaz, the Supreme Court of Virginia has acknowledged Virginia’s former procedure for admission of lab reports in criminal trials failed to safeguard a defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause. The decision today in Cypress v. Commonwealth (VLW 010-6-083) means a new trial for one drug defendant, but no [...]
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Although faulty eyewitness identification has been the basis for most of the convictions overturned by DNA evidence, it’s tough to get an appellate writ granted, much less have a conviction reversed, when the judge or jury believes the witness. So it was no surprise that Maurice James Ward’s challenge to a robbery victim’s identification of [...]
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Posted in Criminal Cases, Writs Granted on Jul 13th, 2010
The Supreme Court of Virginia is taking aim at the issue of whether a robber can be convicted of use of a firearm without evidence of a real gun. In March, the Court of Appeals overruled a 1995 decision holding that an object the victim reasonably believed to be a firearm could never constitute a [...]
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