The VLW Blog

The Times-Dispatch has an article on its Web site about the much-delayed plan for getting the two criminal general district courtrooms out of the deteriorating Public Safety Building. The plan now is to move them to a renovated Manchester Courthouse, with construction to begin in June and be completed in early 2010.

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The Supreme Court of Virginia handed down opinions in a slew of criminal cases listed in a VLW blog Friday, but it didn’t issue a decision in the cases prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys were watching the closest. Those would be Gibson v. Commonwealth, the Virginia Court of Appeals decision in August that held judges [...]

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A narrow majority of the Supreme Court of Virginia failed today to find a “meaningful distinction” in recently decided cases involving a folded dollar bill and hand-rolled cigarettes. Those cases were among seven in which defendants prevailed. The bills in Snell v. Commonwealth, decided by published order today, and Grandison v. Commonwealth, decided last June, [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia says that disgruntled neighbors can’t use the courts to blow the whistle on land use violations. The case comes from Roanoke, and the Times has details.

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Defense lawyers are accustomed to the aggravation of a nonsuit. They know what it’s like when plaintiffs apply the brakes on the eve of a scheduled trial. The shoe was on the other foot in a case handed down today by the Supreme Court of Virginia. In McNally v. Rey, defense attorney John McNally’s corporate [...]

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The Roanoke Times takes a look today at lawyer-turned-author David Baldacci and his life on Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake. Best quote: “Lawyers are paid to tell persuasive stories. So are novelists. Sometimes I think some of the best fiction I ever wrote was when I was a lawyer.”

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The much-litigated custody of 6-year-old Isabella Miller-Jenkins was in court again today, this time before the Supreme Court of Virginia Mathew Staver, the head of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University law school, told the court that the Virginia Constitution and the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevent the court from considering anything [...]

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John Brownlee, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, will step down in a month after seven years as the region’s top federal prosecutor. He confirmed today that he is considering a bid for the Republican nomination for Virginia Attorney General, but has not made any final determination. Julie Dudley, now First Assistant [...]

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As reported on SCOTUSblog: In a widely splintered decision, the Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for death-row executions to resume across the country, concluding that the most common method of lethal injection does not violate the Constitution. The Washington Post notes that Governor Kaine acted quickly to reinstate the death penalty in Virginia.

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To say that Jimmy Roger Lane was caught with the goods would be an understatement. In one pants pocket he had 62 tablets of oxycodone , 17 tablets of hydrocodone and two plastic bags with a total of $4,128 in cash. In the other, he had $181 in cash and 28 tablets of Endocet, a [...]

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