Back on August 11, the Supreme Court of Virginia dropped a major bomb on the appellate world with a single sentence in Hill v. Commonwealth. The sentence was “In judicial orders, as in ordinary conversation, meaning can be clearly expressed and just as clearly...
Did you notice that there was no post to the Court of Appeals of Virginia Blawg last week? You didn’t? Well, there wasn’t. Your humble correspondent was on the road, though not for pleasure alas, and by his return to the Virginia Appellate Lawyer’s World Domination...
Editorial Comment: Today we have a classic example of how the American Criminal Justice System can ensnare people -- both the guilty and innocent -- in a web of contrived evidence, pressure to convict, and grossly ineffective assistance of counsel -- and then fails to...
When testimonial evidence is excluded by a trial court, it is essential that the party who want to introduce that evidence makes a "proffer" of what the evidence would have been. Without a proffer, an appellate court will rarely consider reserving a judgment based on...
Today I second-chaired a criminal trial. Why was an appellate lawyer doing real lawyer work? Well, primarily because in this case (and in a related case that will be tried in about 2 months) there was initially a concern that there would be a significant appellate...
Having just last week participated in the first ever VaCLE Virginia Appellate Academy during which one of my roles was to advise some of the participants on the subtle art of brief writing, I found the appearance on the one published open from the Court of Appeals...
As we enter the Dog Days of Summer, the Court of Appeals has three published opinion to kick off August. Let's start off with a Worker's Compensation appeal where the pro se employee appellee gets a win! Hooray for the little guy -- or in this case gal. The case has...
There were two published opinions, but three published decisions from the Court of Appeals. Because the decision was that the Court has jurisdiction over the rehearing en banc in Lundmark v. Commonwealth, now to be known as Lundmark v. Henrico County, it is the...
The Court of Appeals of Virginia released two published opinions this week, both from criminal cases. In Timothy James Suhay v. Commonwealth of Virginia, we get a unanimous decision from Judge Callins, joined by Judge Friedman and "Justice" Russell -- of course he...
This is a long post which, as a true pedant, I naturally started with some history that is mostly irrelevant to the story (but darn interesting from my point of view) and ends with some grammatical trivia. If you want the short version, skip the next five paragraphs....