The VLW Blog

A co-defendant of Michael Vick has acknowledged spending most of his time taking care of and training the pit bulls fought by “Bad Newz Kennels” through September 2004.

Tony Taylor, a 34-year-old Hampton man, pleaded guilty today to a felony count of conspiring to engage in interstate dog fighting beginning in early 2001. Taylor faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced on Dec. 14. As part of his guilty plea, he agreed to cooperate with the government.

The guilty plea was accompanied by a “Summary of the Facts” available on the Web site of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In it, the government alleges that the “Bad Newz Kennels” operation in Surry County and gambling monies were almost exclusively funded by Vick. Winnings were split among the other three co-defendants, and Taylor admitted using a large portion of his share for living expenses.

The summary lists 14 dog fights, with Vick present at nine of them. The fights involved dogs from Virginia and five other states.

Taylor acknowledges executing two dogs that did not perform well in testing sessions and alleges that two co-defendants, Purnell A. Peace and Quanis L. Phillips, each executed a dog. The summary says nothing about Vick killing an animal. Vick, Peace and Phillips have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled for trial in November.

Taylor said he left the operation in September 2004 after “a disagreement with Phillips and others.”

A Henrico County General District judge said today that he will rule next Thursday on the constitutionality of the civil remedial fees for abusive drivers.

Anthony O. Price pleaded no contest before Judge Archer L. Yeatts III to a misdemeanor charge of driving on a suspended license. The plea subjected Price to the payment of $750 in civil penalties over the next 26 months under the law that took effect July 1.

Price’s court-appointed attorneys, Craig S. Cooley and Esther J. Windmueller, contended that the fees violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because they apply only to Virginia residents.

Virginia Code § 16.1-131.1 requires a judge who finds a law unconstitutional to stay the proceedings and provide a written statement of his findings of law and relevant facts in support of his ruling to the circuit court. The law requires the circuit court to give the case priority on its docket and provides for an interlocutory appeal to the Virginia Court of Appeals if the circuit court also finds the law to be unconstitutional.

Although he referred to the statute, Yeatts did not indicate how he will rule on the issue.

The fees received scant attention during the legislative session when they were included in a major transportation funding package. They are expected to eventually generate about $65 million annually. Publicity about them as they were about to take effect has created a firestorm of criticism about their high cost and the failure of the law to cover out-of-state drivers.

Price’s case was moved from Aug. 8 to Tuesday at Windmueller’s request, but Price did not get word of the change and did not appear. The case was rescheduled for today once he learned of the change.

Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau has an extended article on the U.S. Justice Department’s abandonment of the criminal investigation of the implosion of Reciprocal America, first reported in Virginia Lawyers Weekly on April 2.

The article elicited more than 40 comments on the liberal blog. the Daily Kos, most of which view it, not surprisingly, as further evidence of the incompetence and corruption of the Bush Administration.

Taylor emphasizes the frustration of those who worked on the case and thought that General Reinsurance and officials of ROA should have been indicted but also notes that the abandonment came when DOJ was taking some hits for overzealous prosecution of corporate officers.

Henrico General District Judge Archer L. Yeatts III today rejected an attempt to challenge Virginia’s new scheme of “abusive driver” fees, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Yeatts ruled that a general district court didn’t have the jurisdiction to stop the fees, which took effect July 1 and establish harsher financial penalty for certain traffic offenses.

Richmond lawyers Craig Cooley and Esther Windmueller, who put together the challenge, said they would make their motions in circuit court later this week.

Political reality outweighs a nuanced view of legal ethics.

The Standing Committee on Legal Ethics of the Virginia State Bar reached that conclusion last week in withdrawing advisory Legal Ethics Opinion 1829, which would have eliminated the bright-line guidance that generally bars members of a law firm from appearing before a public body on which another member of the law firm sits.

The proposal created a political firestorm during the 2007 General Assembly session, and 19 of 22 comments submitted to the committee opposed the opinion.

James McCauley, VSB ethics counsel, said the committee still has concerns about the lack of authority in the Code of Professional Responsibility for the earlier opinions and will convey those apprehensions to VSB Council in October. “It’s a political issue as much as it is a legal ethics issue,” he said.

The concept of the appearance of impropriety was eliminated in the adoption of the Code of Responsibility in 2000. The Virginia State and Government Conflicts of Interest Act also has been adopted since the earlier rules and requires disclosure of potential conflicts and recusal of a legislator if a conflict exists.

Those concerns and the potential loss of public service of members of large law firms prompted the recommendation for the adoption of LEO 1829.

Several legislators responded that the change would increase the possibility of collusion and improper conduct.

Litigators who like to catalogue race-neutral bases for striking prospective jurors can add another one that has worked in federal court in Richmond: being a veteran of a Richmond jury.

A 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky, and its progeny protect parties against an exercise of peremptory strikes based on race or gender. In U.S. v. Williams, an unpublished opinion released last week by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a defendanct convicted on a firearm charge said the prosecution had illegally struck black jurors from the venire.

When challenged under Batson, the government “explained that it struck the first two jurors because they appeared uninterested and looked like they were falling asleep,” according to the per curiam opinion. The third juror was struck because he “appeared to be leering, smirking and not taking the proceedings seriously.”

And the fourth strike?

The prosecutor expressed a dislike for working with jurors who previously served on Richmond juries, saying, “If I see a Richmond juror, I just usually want to strike them. … Richmond jurors tend to have not great experiences, and I don’t like dealing with Richmond jurors.”

The Richmond bias was not a racial bias, under the district court ruling. The 4th Circuit panel of Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson, Paul Niemeyer and Roger Gregory, affirmed the lower court.

Our colleagues at the Colorado Springs Business Journal have become the latest Dolan Media Company operation to join the blogosphere.

They launched their blog, the CSBJ Blog, this past Monday. Previously the CSBJ had maintained a local golf league blog.

Congrats to their publisher, Lon Matejczyk, and their editor, Mike Boyd. Cheers, gentlemen!

Judge James W. Benton Jr., the last of the original members of the Virginia Court of Appeals, will retire Oct. 1.

Benton (photo at right) turns 64 in September. He is also the state’s senior appellate judge.

A native of Norfolk and a graduate of Temple University and the University of Virginia law school, Benton was appointed to the court of appeals when it was created in 1985. He had been in private practice in Richmond before the appointment. He was and is the only black member of the court.

Benton generally is regarded as the most liberal member of the court and dissents far more often than any other judge, usually on behalf of criminal defendants. Despite his frequent disagreement with his colleagues, he is well respected by the other members of the court for his intelligence, work ethic and pleasant demeanor.

Because Benton’s retirement will occur when the General Assembly is not in session, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will choose his successor. The legislature will fill the position next year, so Kaine is expected to confer with Republican legislators about the appointment.

President Bush yesterday nominated U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. to a seat on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Conrad (photo at right) is a judge in the Western District of North Carolina; he sits in Charlotte. He was nominated by Bush for his district court seat and confirmed unanimously in 2005. He became Chief Judge of the district last year.

He would take the position vacated by U.S. District Judge James Dickson Phillips Jr. in 1994. This seat on the 4th Circuit has been open longer than any other judicial position in the country. Bush has had trouble getting a nominee confirmed due to politics, as did President Bill Clinton before him.

A Clemson graduate, Conrad earned his law degree from the University of Virginia law school. He practiced law in Charlottesville from 1983 to 1986 with the firm now known as Michie, Hamlett, Lowry, Rasmussen & Tweel. He was in the U.S. Attorney’s office in North Carolina from 1989 to 2004, including three years as the head prosecutor. He practiced with a North Carolina firm until he went on the bench.

Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and three other men were indicted today in Richmond federal court on federal charges related to dog fighting.

U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg announced the charges late in the afternoon.

Vick and the others are accused of running a dog fighting enterprise called “Bad Newz Kennels” on Vick’s Smithfield property from 2001 until April of this year. The indictments allege they engaged in dog fighting in other locales up and down the Atlantic coast as well.