Virginia Lawyers Weekly VA Lawyers Weekly

Although items of clothing identified by a convenience store clerk as being worn by the person who robbed her 10 days earlier contained DNA from defendant, the Court of Appeals reverses defendant’s conviction for robbery, as the clothing included DNA ...

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

A legal resident who was seeking to become a naturalized citizen, and who failed to disclose at a second interview with a USCIS agent that he had pending federal fraud charges, was properly convicted on two counts of unlawful procurement ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Allyson K. Duncan

Agents of the Department of Homeland Security did not exceed the scope of a warrant to search for evidence related to a perjury charge when they seized $41,000 in cash in a laundry basket in defendant’s home, and the 4th ...

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

A defendant convicted of possessing a stolen firearm knowing it was stolen loses his challenge to his 70-month sentence based on his claim that Johnson v. U.S.’s invalidation of the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act meant the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Paul V. Niemeyer

A defendant who faked his own death and created a new identity of his alleged twin brother in order to receive social security survivors’ benefits for his two children, is guilty of the theft of government property, and the 4th ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Allyson K. Duncan

A defendant cannot overturn her murder-for-hire conviction on a claim that the government manufactured federal jurisdiction by prompting the contact she used to hire someone to kill her husband to use a cell phone to arrange for her to meet ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Dennis W. Shedd

The 4th Circuit upholds a district court decision to abstain from intervening in two convicted murderers’ proceeding asserting that a North Carolina state court’s second review, on appeal by the state, of their right to review of their death sentences ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge G. Steven Agee

A Floyd County Circuit Court grants defendant’s motion to suppress statements he made to officers when they continued questioning him after he stated he wanted a lawyer. Defendant was in custody, in a jail cell. Two sheriff’s deputies were standing ...

Tagged with: Criminal Floyd County Circuit Court Judge Marcus H. Long Jr. Virginia Circuit Courts

In sentencing defendant for felony child abuse and neglect in violation of Va. Code § 18.2-371.1(A), the trial court did not err by imposing a sentence that exceeded the jury’s sentence recommendation. Defendant took her six-week-old daughter to the emergency ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Teresa M. Chafin Virginia Court of Appeals

Although defendant claims she did not intend to fire a gun inside a hotel room where she allegedly had gone to commit suicide, she put her finger on the trigger and discharged the gun toward the hotel room floor, prior ...

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