The VLW Blog

The Virginia State Bar Criminal Law Section has presented its 2010 Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Award to retired Virginia Court of Appeals Judge Jere M.H. “Mac” Willis Jr. of Fredericksburg.
In presenting this year’s award at the group’s meeting in Williamsburg last week, section chair Richard E. Trodden, commonwealth’s attorney for Arlington County, said Willis embodies [...]

[Read more →]

Same song, only a slightly different verse.
Eddie Nelson Ray wanted to call his mother to testify in his trial on charges of obtaining money by false pretenses and uttering a false bank note. The judge said no, and there was no proffer as to what Momma might have said.
Not surprisingly, the Virginia Court of Appeals [...]

[Read more →]

The Supreme Court of Virginia will get a chance to interpret Virginia Code Sec. 33.1-386, which requires a contractor to submit any claim for damages against the Virginia Department of Transportation “at the time of the occurrence or beginning of the work upon which the claim and subsequent action is based.”

AMEC Civil LLC acknowledged that [...]

[Read more →]

The live testimony of Joe Madison would have been devastating for Alton Nelson Wilder.
But fortunately for Wilder, Madison, a homeless man who said he saw two men wheeling away items from a stockyard in Norfolk, didn’t show up for trial and his observations came in through a 911 tape.
Madison’s statements were admissible under the present [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld today the enforcement of a custody order from North Carolina in favor of a male homosexual couple.
Both partners contributed sperm to artificially inseminate a Minnesota woman who agreed to be a surrogate mother.
The relatonship between the mother and the partners deteriorated, and a North Carolina judge resolved a custody [...]

[Read more →]

The concept of “right result, wrong reason” is getting a thorough analysis from Virginia’s appellate courts these days.
The latest airing comes today from the Court of Appeals, which assumed without deciding that the trial judge in Arlington erred in justifying the search of a defendant addled by marijuana and PCP on the ground that a [...]

[Read more →]

We’re not sure what it takes to qualify as “obscene, vulgar, profane, lascivious, or indecent language” under Virginia Code Sec. 18.2-427, but we’re far too modest – our faces are still red – to repeat the words that the Virginia Court of Appeals says fall short of that standard in Lofgren v. Commonwealth.
The words certainly [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia Court of Appeals relies on Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts today in reversing a drunken driving conviction.
The case, Grant v. Commonwealth, is the first state appellate decision since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Melendez-Diaz in late June. Grant was pending when Melendez-Diaz was decided, and the Court of Appeals asked for supplemental briefs in light [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia Court of Appeals says today that improper driving is not a lesser included offense of reckless driving by speed.
The defendant, accused of driving more than 80 miles per hour, presented a jury instruction based on Virginia Code Sec. 46.2-869, which allows a conviction for improper driving rather than reckless driving “where the degree [...]

[Read more →]

A divided panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals today granted the petition of a former Navy SEAL trainee for a writ of actual innocence in the murder of a woman in Virginia Beach in June 1995.
Dustin Allen Turner contended that a fellow trainee, Billy Joe Brown, was solely responsible for the murder of Jennifer [...]

[Read more →]