The VLW Blog

The late comedian Richard Pryor once performed at a prison. He later confessed he expected to feel a kinship with the oppressed inmates. After he actually met some of them, however, he exclaimed, “Thank God we got jails!”
That expression comes to mind while reading about Christopher Allen Coates in this opinion from Chief U.S. District [...]

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If you’re asking the Court of Appeals to consider an issue of first impression, your appeal won’t be kicked under Rule 5A:20 for failing to cite precedent directly on point.
Duh, you say. But it’s more complicated than you might think.
Rule 5A:20, which covers “Questions Presented,” requires an appellant’s opening brief to cover the “principles [...]

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More drug defendants have had their sentences reduced under the crack cocaine amendment in the Eastern District of Virginia than in any other federal district court in the country.
In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission amended federal sentencing guidelines to provide for a downward adjustment by two base offense levels for crack cocaine offenses. The commission [...]

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A man accused of molesting his stepson 20 years ago has been allowed to withdraw his guilty plea to four counts of forcible sodomy.
The Daily News Record reports that Circuit Judge T.J. Wilson reconsidered Friday his ruling the previous day that Timothy Linder had pleaded guilty of his own free will.
Linder testified last week that [...]

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A ruling by the 4th Circuit means a third sentencing for a Roanoke County man convicted of possessing a gun as a felon.
According to The Roanoke Times, Michael Ray Thornton was convicted in 2005 of being a felon in possession of a gun and body armor, and sentenced to 17 years, 15 of which were [...]

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What part of “not to be presumed reasonable” don’t you understand?
That appeared to be the question the U.S. Supreme Court had for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today in reversing and remanding a 360-month sentence imposed on a drug defendant.
The case of Lawrence Nelson was one of those the Supreme Court remanded for [...]

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Everette Antwon Burrell caught a break with a boot-camp sentence early in his criminal career, but that sentence came back to haunt him years later.
Burrell was sentenced to boot camp for a 1993 drug conviction. When he came up for sentencing in Richmond federal court for a later cocaine conviction, the district court said the [...]

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The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed last week a downward departure for a sentence that it likely would have found unreasonable before the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Gall v. U.S. and Kimbrough v. U.S. on Dec. 10.
Larry Pauley was convicted of one count of possessing child pornography and acknowledged that his guidelines’ [...]

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The U.S. Sentencing Commission decided this afternoon to make its reduction in the sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine retroactive.
That typically would mean a reduction of about five years for a 20-year sentence and about two years for a 10-year term, according to Rob Wagner, an assistant federal public defender in Richmond.
It also would have a [...]

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The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled that federal judges are note required to follow sentencing guidelines that permit harsher penalties for crack cocaine crimes than powder cocaine. In a case from Norfolk, the court, 7-2, reinforced the view that the federal sentencing guidelines are merely advisory rather than mandatory. Lawyers USA has the story.

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