The VLW Blog

Franklin County Circuit Judge William N. Alexander II wrote the members of the House Courts of Justice Committee yesterday that he has done some serious soul searching since he appeared before the committee on Feb. 24. Our account that appearance is here.
He acknowledged mistakes in his handling of a special grand jury that indicted Franklin [...]

[Read more →]

Just how friendly judges can be with the lawyers who appear before them has always been a difficult ethical question.
Facebook and other social media don’t make it any less difficult, as an opinion by the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee illustrates.
A majority of the committee finds that a judge may not add “lawyers who may [...]

[Read more →]

Virginia Beach Juvenile & Domestic Relations Judge Ramona Taylor is censured by the Supreme Court of Virginia today for thwarting a juvenile defendant’s right to appeal the judge’s bond ruling.
In 2007, Taylor denied bond for a 15-year-old repeat offender who admitted assaulting a younger boy.  Taylor then wrote in her bond order that the order [...]

[Read more →]

The best that could be said for Virginia Beach J&DR Judge Ramona D. Taylor was that she “bumbled through” an assault case and “made a pretty serious error,” Justice Lawrence L. Koontz Jr. observed today.
“Why shouldn’t censure be appropriate?” he asked her attorney, Kevin Martingayle.
Martingayle responded that judicial canons don’t contemplate censure for a good [...]

[Read more →]

When it comes to an “appearance of impropriety,” judicial codes of ethics may echo Potter Stewart: they know it when they see it.
For the first time, a newly revised Code of Conduct for federal judges defines the phrase that governs so much of what judges do, or shouldn’t do. The new version of the Code, [...]

[Read more →]

If House Bill 1753 was aimed at M. Keith Blankenship, the juvenile and domestic relations district judge in Wythe County who was twice convicted of traffic offenses last year, it won’t be necessary.
Blankenship took an indefinite leave of absence after being charged with drunken driving in Smyth County on March 1 and with hit and [...]

[Read more →]

A Virginia judge can pass the collection plate at church, but the judge may not want to preach during the stewardship campaign, according to a new ethics advisory opinion for judges.
Virginia’s Canons of Judicial Conduct clamp down on fund-raising activity for fear the prestige of the judge’s office will be perceived as leverage to solicit [...]

[Read more →]

This is a case from Maryland. But in light of the recent de-benching of a Southwest Virginia judge by the Supreme Court on a complaint brought by the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, one can’t help but wonder what would have been the result here in the Old Dominion.
In November, Scott County J&DR Judge [...]

[Read more →]