House Bill 1306 would require jurors to provide a Social Security, voter registration card or photo identification when they assemble for juror selection.
If a juror doesn’t have the ID with him, he must sign “a statement affirming, under penalty of perjury, that he is the named juror.”
“Is this a problem outside of movies and novels?” [...]
Tags:
The L.A. Times offers a cautionary tale this week in a piece about how jury duty is becoming more of a hardship for members of the venire.
In one civil trial, jurors who were already peeved at having to miss work became openly disdainful about the plaintiff’s claims. The juror hostility was so palpable the parties [...]
Tags:
The Advisory Committee on Rules of Court has backed off from its original proposal to have jurors in criminal court identified only by number as a matter of course.
The original draft had drawn criticism from newspapers, the Virginia Coalition for Open Government and even from Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, who sponsored the legislation that [...]
Tags:
A jury room dispute is now public following a closely watched Shenandoah County murder trial.
Members of the jury recommended on Thursday that Jody Lynn Bradley serve nine years in prison for the second-degree murder of Brendon Manning Barker, a 16-year-old boy who was shot while visiting Bradley’s daughter.
Some jurors are now arguing that his sentence [...]
Tags:
The jury deadlocked in an Albemarle County trial involving a killing 21 years ago.
In 1988, Roger Lee Shifflett was robbed and shot to death at the convenience store he owned and operated, reports The Daily Progress. Less than a month after the shooting, defendant Alvin Lee Morris divorced his own wife, married Shifflett’s widow and helped [...]
Tags:
A Fairfax County jury has returned a $3.2 million verdict for a shopper at the IKEA housewares store in Woodbridge who suffered a crushed pelvis in 2006 when a stack of countertops fell on her.
Edward L. Weiner, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said his client incurred $75,000 in medical bills after two surgeries, $50,000 in lost wages [...]
Tags:
Even though the trial judge remarked that imposing jury costs on a nonsuiting plaintiff was “pretty standard here in this court,” the Supreme Court of Virginia finds any such jury fee unwarranted under Virginia law.
In Martin v. Duncan, the wrongful death plaintiff didn’t like the way things were going at trial and took a nonsuit. [...]
Tags:
The Supreme Court of Virginia today outlawed the use of the “unavoidable accident” jury instruction in personal injury trials.
Writing for a unanimous court in Hancock-Underwood v. Knight, Justice Donald W. Lemons said, “While in the past we have permitted under rare and specific circumstances an instruction on unavoidable accident, today we join the clear trend [...]
Tags:
In Virginia, the taxpayers pick up the tab for civil litigants who exercise their right to a jury trial. One Virginia senator wants to make a small change in that practice.
Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Daleville, has introduced legislation that would stick the plaintiff with the bill for the jury if the plaintiff came away empty handed [...]
Tags:
That must be what a Christiansburg woman has been thinking for the past seven months.
Here’s a lady who gets a parking ticket at a middle school for parking in the bus lanes. Obviously displeased about the ticket, she yells back at the cop, “Drop dead, fat—,” as she drives away.
If only she had left it [...]
Tags:
