Virginia Lawyers Weekly VA Lawyers Weekly

A defendant was properly categorized under the Armed Career Criminal Act, or ACCA, because his conviction for assault with intent to murder qualified as a “violent felony” under the statute. Background Kevin Battle appeals from the district court’s denial of ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr.

In a case of first impression in any circuit, a majority of the court held the federal Hate Crimes Act may be constitutionally applied to an assault of a victim engaged in interstate commercial activity at his place of work. ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge James A. Wynn Jr.

A defendant’s claim that the police lacked probable cause to search him was rejected because the search came after police found drugs in his vehicle, giving them a basis to make an arrest and search him incident to that arrest. ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Richard Y. AtLee Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

The district court did not err in sentencing the defendant to a longer term because of three prior convictions for criminal domestic violence, because those convictions categorically qualified as a “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, or ACCA. ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge William B. Traxler Jr.

An individual’s post-trial attack on his conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine failed when the court held the government satisfied its discovery obligations. Background In October 2015, Arnulfo Fagot-Maximo and five co-conspirators were charged in a single count indictment with ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Liam O'Grady U.S. District Court - Eastern District

The U.S. could not be sued for the unlawful detention and removal of an El Salvadoran native who obtained derivative U.S. citizenship when his father became a naturalized citizen in 1995 because the decisions by immigration officials to investigate, detain ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge T.S. Ellis III U.S. District Court - Eastern District

Although the police were not required to give Miranda warnings to defendant before questioning him while executing a search warrant, the warnings provided were constitutionally sufficient. Facts Defendant Spinner’s father-in-law was a murder victim. Spinner and the victim’s daughter, Tamara, ...

Tagged with: Criminal Justice Charles S. Russell Supreme Court of Virginia

Where defendant was arrested on a rape warrant, and, after a preliminary hearing, the matter was referred to a grand jury, which issued an indictment of rape, second offense, the trial court correctly refused to dismiss the indicted charge after ...

Tagged with: Criminal Supreme Court of Virginia Unpublished Opinion

A husband, who was in the midst of a contentious divorce from his wife, was properly convicted of his wife’s murder where one of his children and two of his friends identified him as the man in security camera video ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Mary B. Malveaux Virginia Court of Appeals

The district court erred by revoking the defendant’s supervised release on the basis he had been found guilty of possession with intent to distribute “crack cocaine” because the evidence showed the drug was powder cocaine. However, because possessing and intending ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Roger L. Gregory