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....
Readers of the Blawg of the Sage of Virginia Beach are familiar with the David-Goliath Index in which Steve Emmert reports of the win-loss record of the “little guy” (typically a criminal defendant or solo plaintiff in a contact or tort case) against the “big guy”...
I am proud to say that in addition to being a “procedural geek,” I am also a “data geek.” I am fascinated by looking at statistics about anything – discovering hidden (and usually meaningless) patterns and trends. So when you combine appellate procedure and...
An event of some note occurred on July 28, 2022, but it received little fanfare. Indeed, I am somewhat chagrined that I was not more vigilant in reporting the event as it was something that I have been anxiously awaiting. What was the momentous event? Nothing less...
The Court of Appeals released one published decision today, but not in an appeal. Rather, the Court under took to review a writ of actual innocence, which is an "OJ" proceeding. OJ stands for Original Jurisdiction, which means that the petition is filed directly in...