An officer’s stop of a tractor-trailer with a dirty license plate cover and reflective coating on the tail lights was based on a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the tail lights violated a Virginia statute restricting alteration of motor vehicles ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

A majority of the Court of Appeals affirms the trial court denying mother’s motion to change child custody after she moved to North Carolina without her two minor children and awards father his appellate attorney’s fees and courts to be ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

Although a divorce court found that wife, who withdrew $40,000 from an Ameritrade account to start her own business, had dissipated marital assets, the court did not identify which assets wife dissipated, and the Court of Appeals remands the case ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

A defendant accused of fatally shooting his estranged wife in the head and leaving his latent fingerprints on a nearby typed “suicide note” cannot rebut expert opinions by two fingerprint analysts for the commonwealth with expert testimony from a law ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

A trial court had no jurisdiction to terminate a mother’s parental rights to her child based on her waiver in a property settlement agreement and because that decision is void, it could not support the trial court’s subsequent denial of ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals affirms defendant’s conviction for felon possession of a firearm based on evidence defendant owned and knew the location of the gun used to shoot from a car he occupied as a passenger with two others. A ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals affirms defendant’s jury trial conviction for felon firearm possession based on evidence he was passenger in a car found to contain both crack cocaine and a gun:  cocaine is probative of intent to possess a gun ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals affirms mother’s jury trial conviction for second degree felony murder in death of her three-year old son who drank illegally purchased methadone mother left unattended in his cough medicine cup; the evidence establishes the toddler’s death ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

A defendant who illegally and feloniously purchased methadone, poured it in a medicine cup and left the cup unattended on the kitchen counter where her three-year-old son found it in the same cup he had used to take cold medicine, ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

The Court of Appeals affirms a school bus driver’s bench trial conviction for attempted aggravated sexual battery; defendant waived his evidentiary objections and the evidence supports the trial court’s finding of the intent required by Va. Code §§18.2-67.3 and 18.2-67.10(6). ...

Tagged with: Criminal Judge Jere M.H. Willis Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals