Virginia Lawyers Weekly VA Lawyers Weekly

A defendant will face multiple drug-related charges because a lower court erred in failing to apply a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The search warrant contained indicia of probable cause, described the items sought, the place to be ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge William G. Petty Virginia Court of Appeals

A statutory exemption allowing individuals to possess a firearm with a magazine capacity of more than 20 rounds if it is secured in a personal, private motor vehicle was not available to a defendant who had stored the firearm in ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Marla Graff Decker Virginia Court of Appeals

A DUI conviction stands despite a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that warrantless blood draws incident to arrest are prohibited. The arrest and blood draw in this case occurred in 2015, when the practice was allowed under Virginia law. Background ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge William G. Petty Virginia Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals correctly determined there was sufficient evidence to find that defendant, a convicted felon, violated Code § 18.2-308.2(A) by constructively possessing shotgun shells found in his pickup truck. Overview Police officers searched appellant Hodnett’s residence and found ...

Tagged with: Criminal Published Order Supreme Court of Virginia

A criminal defendant’s petition for habeas corpus relief was timely because his state court motion to reduce his sentence constituted an application for collateral review under Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that tolled the statute of limitations during its ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Robert B. King

Where a judge granted a continuance because a material witness’s medical condition prevented him from attending trial, proof of the condition is not required to excuse the delay for speedy trial purposes. A proffer from the commonwealth’s attorney that the ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge David W. Lannetti Norfolk Circuit Court Virginia Circuit Courts

The conviction of a defendant who denied sexually assaulting his daughter and disputed other aspects of her testimony was affirmed because the defendant failed to cite any legal authority to support his argument that these discrepancies rendered the evidence insufficient ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Robert J. Humphreys Virginia Court of Appeals

A defendant was properly convicted of strangulation where, in addition to being unable to breathe, the victim’s face and lips went numb and she suffered abrasions, pain and redness around her neck, but the defendant could not be convicted of ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Robert J. Humphreys Virginia Court of Appeals

Where the proceedings for defendant’s plea-based convictions of new crimes and his probation revocation had separate record numbers, his failure to list both numbers in his joint appeal was not a jurisdictional defect that justified dismissing the non-listed case. Background ...

Tagged with: Criminal Published Order Supreme Court of Virginia

Because a defendant’s prior bad acts are admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence 404(b) in a case involving a woman charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, the jury will also hear that she possessed a loaded firearm on ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Michael F. Urbanski U.S. District Court - Western District