The VLW Blog

SALEM – The renovated childhood home of famed civil rights pioneer Oliver Hill will be active once again with a new plan for mentoring and tutoring of Roanoke school students. Big Brothers Big Sisters is partnering with the Roanoke City Schools and the Oliver Hill Foundation to launch an after-school mentoring program at the house [...]

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A Sterling man claims a police video shows a Loudoun County officer knocking him unconscious from behind as he stood with his hands in the air. The alleged 2009 assault occurred as the former deputy sheriff responded to a report of an incident at a shopping center. The civil rights lawsuit filed by Carlos Garcia [...]

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With a civil liberties lawsuit hanging over their head, Grayson County leaders reversed themselves and agreed this week to permit a “Peace Pentagon” spiritual center in the rural community. The county’s board of supervisors granted a special use permit for the interfaith retreat planned by the Oracle Institute, an organization founded by former attorney Laura [...]

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A police officer is not liable for a civil rights violation for kicking in the door of a man’s home to arrest him for drunken driving, in a new case from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Oct. 2, 2004, Vienna police officer M.A. Reeves followed Alan J. Cilman from a sports bar [...]

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A self-described “spiritual counselor” has lost her federal-court bid to avoid regulation as a business by Chesterfield County. Patricia Moore-King uses the trade name “Psychic Sophie,” and offers Tarot card readings and psychic and clairvoyant readings, in person, live online, over the telephone and via email. She leases office space in a business complex that [...]

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A federal judge has denied a motion to dismiss civil claims against a police officer involved in a Saltville incident that started with a speeding ticket and ended with a whole family going to jail. U.S. District Judge James P. Jones ruled the case can proceed against the officer who arrested Larry Jackson for refusing [...]

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An officer who stopped a man for speeding ended up wrongfully arresting and jailing the man’s entire family, mostly for obstruction of justice, according to a lawsuit targeting the police in Saltville. The lawsuit filed by Larry Jackson describes an officer losing his temper at the Jacksons’ home, arresting one family member after another as [...]

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The 4th Circuit has set aside a $10 million punitive damage award in a race discrimination case that was the largest verdict reported in 2008 in Virginia Lawyers Weekly. In its Feb. 12 decision in Worldwide Network Services LLC v. DynCorp Internat’l LLC, the appellate panel upheld the jury award of $5 million in compensatory [...]

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Ruling that communications to others urging the death of a civil rights lawyer could not be considered a “true threat,” a Roanoke federal judge has dismissed one of the convictions of neo-Nazi William A. White. Three other convictions of threats or intimidation were upheld by Senior U.S. District Judge James C. Turk. White, a Roanoke [...]

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U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad has denied motions to dismiss excessive force and conspiracy claims filed by a former jail inmate who claims he was injured by guards at the Roanoke jail. Relying on the touchstone cases of Twombly and Iqbal , Roanoke Sheriff Octavia Johnson argued DaVon Bell’s complaint about a pervasive pattern of [...]

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