The VLW Blog

Travis Stacey Whitehead was in the right rear passenger seat when a narcotics detection dog alerted on the driver’s door of a car in
Suffolk in April 2006.
Police searched the car and the other four occupants of the vehicle before they searched Whitehead and found heroin residue and paraphernalia in his pocket.
Whitehead contended that the alert […]

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The Maryland Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, heard an unusual argument on Monday. A public defender ignored the respectful opening, “May it please the court…” and simply asked the judges, “What’s up?”
The nonplussed chief judge corrected him, noting the proper pronunciation is “Whassssup?” a la the popular Budweiser ads from the late […]

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We have yet another example of the importance of precision in appellate practice in Virginia, even if the lack of precision ultimately turned out not to be fatal.The issue stemmed from the detention of Matthew Tremaine Moore in February 2005 after a Henrico patrolman noticed a peeling inspection sticker on the windshield of Moore’s rental […]

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Twelve of the 18 opinions from the Supreme Court of Virginia today are criminal cases – and another one was a sexually violent predator case.
Defendants prevailed in eight of the criminal cases and the SVP opinion was a split decision.
In the SVP case, Commonwealth v. Garrett, the court ruled that the trial judge erred in […]

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A former defense contractor pleaded guilty this week to taking part in a scheme to steal U.S. Army fuel worth nearly $40 million.  According to a Justice Department news release, Lee Dubois, 32, and his cohorts used phony documents to refill trucks again and again with aviation and diesel fuel at an Army base in […]

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Two murders from the 1980s may be solved with indictments today against a convicted rapist who has been in prison since 1985.
The Roanoke Times reports that Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell is seeking indictments from today’s grand jury in two previously unsolved killings and a rape from the mid-1980s that have been linked to the same […]

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A Floyd County man is charged with murder and hit-and-run in the death of Roanoke lawyer Tom Farrell.
Farrell was struck and killed in January as he jogged on a Roanoke County street.  A grand jury today indicted Jeffrey Martin Young, 31, in Farrell’s death, according to The Roanoke Times.
By Peter Vieth

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Five illegal immigrants are being held in the Fairfax County jail as material witnesses to a murder, even though they are not charged with any crime.
As reported by the Washington Post, the five Hondurans may be behind bars for months, and their lawyers are protesting.  Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh (left) defends the use of […]

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A decision this week from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rips the lid off of a saga that begs for treatment on one of those breathless television crime dramas.
A Maryland woman is exposed as possibly the most perilous domestic partner in history. Nancy Jean Siegel (left) apparently devoted much of her life […]

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The Virginia Court of Appeals today issued a writ of actual innocence, the first petition to be granted since the law authorizing the procedure was enacted in 2004.
The action was expected because Attorney General Robert McDonnell acknowledged in his response to the petition that Darrell Andrew Copeland was improperly convicted of possessing a firearm after […]

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