The VLW Blog

“This is not a game of ‘Gotcha,’ ” insisted Senior Virginia Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy. “We want to deal with substantive issues.”
But she acknowledged that the two state appellate courts are refusing to address more and more of those issues because of procedural defaults. She said she didn’t know whether the blame lay [...]

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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, both contained [...]

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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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Judge Nelson T. Overton, who served on the Court of Appeals from 1995 to 1999, died at his home yesterday. He was 79.
The judge was a circuit judge in Hampton before he became the first judge from the Peninsula to serve on the intermediate court.
The Daily Press has details.

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Was it a grand gesture on a moonlit night? That first flush of new parenthood?
We don’t really get the details in Miller v. Miller, decided yesterday by the Virginia Court of Appeals. But we do know now that just throwing a prenuptial agreement into a fire did not revoke the prenup, whatever the couple may [...]

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A papa tried a gender reversal on that truism when he asked a divorce judge to switch custody from the mother to the dad, who wanted to relocate to Florida.
The divorce judge said evidence showed the father’s response to a “strained relationship” with his daughter was to set ever stricter limits on the girl’s behavior [...]

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To an experienced narcotics detective, a dollar bill folded in a certain way can only mean drugs. A defense lawyer tries to get the fact-finder to see other possibilities.
In Snell v. Commonwealth, police found a folded-up dollar bill in the wallet of a runaway kid. Unfolding the bill, which contained cocaine, was [...]

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A dad in Fairfax asked a judge to give him more visitation time with his sons. The reason? He wanted to maximize his participation in the social, recreational and sports groups of his sons, ages 9 and 11. The boys play football, baseball, basketball and soccer. Mom expressed concern, testifying that the dad put an [...]

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