The VLW Blog

A man who posted menacing lyrics on his MySpace page can be convicted of  communicating written threats, even if the alleged victim didn’t have a computer, the Court of Appeals has ruled. John Holcomb used online rhythm and rhyme to broadcast his animosity toward his former girlfriend during a custody battle over the couple’s daughter. [...]

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A Virginia criminal case has become the focus of a national debate over the reliability of scientific evidence about shaken baby syndrome. A Court of Appeals panel this week will consider whether to hear an appeal based in part on whether a jury ignored critical medical testimony in the case of an imprisoned care giver. [...]

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A Court of Appeals panel has overturned Warren County’s barking dog law as unconstitutional, but one judge argues for a more lenient approach to local noise ordinances. The Warren County noise ordinance was overly vague under the standard established in a 2009 Supreme Court of Virginia opinion overturning a Virginia Beach noise law, the three-judge [...]

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The Court of Appeals has withdrawn an opinion reversing an adoption decision where the trial judge refused to postpone the hearing to allow the child’s mother to participate. The unpublished opinion is no longer available on the court’s website. The mother planned to challenge termination of her parental rights in Danville Circuit Court, but – [...]

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A bail bondsman’s encounter with a man at a funeral must have looked a little like an episode of “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Clifton L. Collins came up from North Carolina to Mecklenburg County because he heard a man he was looking for would be attending a funeral. The man he sought had skipped out [...]

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A Norfolk man whose loud protest about a jury summons earned him a contempt conviction has been exonerated by the Court of Appeals of Virginia. James C. Henderson definitely did NOT want to serve on a jury. Summoned in 2009, he showed up at the Norfolk courthouse, making it clear to all in a loud [...]

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The en banc Court of Appeals has rejected a writ of actual innocence for Dustin Turner, the former Navy Seal trainee who has been serving time for a murder he says he did not commit. Turner was convicted in 1996 of abduction with intent to defile and murder and sentenced to 82 years in prison. [...]

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Lawyers like debate, and they don’t necessarily lose their taste for disputation when they go on the bench. Judge Robert J. Humphreys, of the Virginia Court of Appeals, relishes the intellectual give-and-take on his court. But he misses one of the judges who used to keep him on his toes, according to remarks he made [...]

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Although a wife didn’t earn income on her college degree until after the parties separated, she used her college loans for living expenses, and the Court of Appeals agrees husband must pay $11,000 of her college loan debt. Yesterday an appellate panel upheld a Montgomery County divorce court’s property split that gave the wife equity [...]

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A woman who lived with a child’s biological mother, whom she married under Canadian law, was not a “person with a legitimate interest” in visitation with the child, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled today. The child, born in 1996, was four years old when her biological mom and dad divorced. The child lived with [...]

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