The VLW Blog

A man who unsuccessfully challenged police use of GPS tracking technology to gather evidence against him has failed to avoid a 61-year prison sentence for a Campbell County grocery store burglary. Things could get even worse for Keith Lamont Hill, formerly of Bedford. He faces sentencing on similar convictions in Lynchburg Friday. Hill claimed police [...]

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When not clashing over the facts and the law, lawyers like to talk about food – especially, their favorite lunch counters and barbecue joints on the way to and from the courthouse. Our past coverage of lawyers’ top eateries included the venerable Texas Inn, perched precariously over the James River valley at the edge of [...]

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Model jury instructions for federal courts have been beefed up in an effort to deter jurors’ use of social media during trial, according to the U.S. Judicial Conference. The new guidelines spell out in more detail the consequences for jurors when the court discovers a juror has used cell phones, smartphones or other devices to [...]

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A dozen motorcyclists convicted of violating Virginia’s mandatory helmet law had their convictions reversed by the state Court of Appeals Tuesday. Three other bikers had helmet convictions affirmed. The 15 defendants all were wearing headgear of some kind when they attended the 2011 Virginia Beach Bike Classic, but police claimed the riders’ helmets failed to [...]

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A special election is scheduled for November to fill a recently vacated seat on the Virginia State Bar council from Fairfax County. Elizabeth Finberg has resigned from the council, according to VSB executive director Karen Gould. Finberg had been with the Vienna litigation firm of Cochran and Owen. She is now assistant general counsel for [...]

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Convicted murderer George Huguely V will not get an evidentiary hearing on his claim that the prosecution withheld evidence of a planned civil suit in violation of Brady v. Maryland, a Charlottesville Circuit Court said Aug. 15. Huguely alleged that before trial, prosecutors were aware that the family of the victim, fellow U.Va. student Yeardley [...]

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Proponents of the paperless clerk’s office held forth in Portsmouth last week at the annual gathering of the Virginia Court Clerks’ Association. E-data pioneer Jack Kennedy, clerk of the Wise County Circuit Court, joined the county circuit judge and the commonwealth’s attorney to describe the benefits of the court’s electronic filing system, Kennedy reported in [...]

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Tim Heaphy – the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia – is going social. His office now is using both Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the public. “Social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook have become essential communication tools in our interconnected world,” Heaphy said in a news release. The prosecutor’s [...]

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Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh Monday moved to dismiss the murder charge against Michael Hash for the 1996 slaying of a Culpeper County woman. Hash’s capital murder conviction was overturned in February with a federal judge finding police and prosecutorial misconduct. Now, with a judge dismissing the murder charge, Hash is a “totally free [...]

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The Miller-Jenkins same-sex custody case has spawned a federal racketeering lawsuit accusing various persons, including alleged agents of Liberty University’s law school, of conspiring in the kidnapping of 10-year-old Isabella Miller. The girl disappeared with her birth mother, Lisa Miller, in 2009, in the midst of a custody battle with former partner Janet Jenkins. Jenkins [...]

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