The Virginia Appellate Lawyer’s Court of Appeals of Virginia Blog

Most who know me well, know that I spend as little time as possible in the trial courts — in fact virtually none.  I managed to keep that record intact on Monday.  I was asked to consult on a personal injury case that had moved from the general district court to the circuit court but was procedurally probably not ripe for an appeal.  I prepared a motion to remand the case which was to have been argued at 10AM in the Roanoke City Circuit Court.  The defendant made an offer of

Anthony Andre’s Mackey v. Commonwealth of Virginia, an unpublished opinion of the Court of Appeals released on January 26, 2021 deserves a brief mention in this space because it is a classic example of a failure to take not of what is a final order can result in the appellate court being unable to reach the merits of the case.  In this instance, the issue is what constitutes the final order in a criminal trial — the sentencing order or a subsequent order entered addressing a

Shaka Markel Long v. Commonwealth of Virginia.  The lone published opinion from the Court of Appeals this week – the first in two weeks – comes from the Circuit Court of York County and involves convictions for multiple drug offenses.  The issue is one common to drug cases: when should the trial court permit hearsay evidence of a confidential informant to be received.  The testimony in question was offered at a hearing to suppress the evidence recovered following a “stop out”

If you Google the difference between the terms “lawyer” and “attorney” you will get any number of websites with various explanations of the two terms origins and meanings.  Generally, the etymology of the two words comes down to one being of from Middle English (lawyer) and the other being introduced into the English vernacular by way of Norman French (attorney) — you know, 1066 and all that. The curious thing is that the meaning of the two terms has varied over time so that

The following essay is meant to demonstrate why we say that “Law students teach themselves the law; law school teaches them to think like lawyers.”  When we say that we are trained to “think like lawyers,” we mean that we learn how to approach evidence and the law to apply it logically and without bias.  If we learn this lesson well, it can be applied to many situations outside the law.  For example, to conspiracy theories and arguments on public policy. “There are three kind

The first set of published opinions from the Court of Appeals of Virginia for 2021 includes its first reversal in a criminal case as well as its first application of a procedural bar.  The Court also addresses an issue of standing in an administrative law case.  Let’s start with the most unusual of the three, the reversal of a criminal conviction in a jury trial. Rae’quan Xavier Dandridge v. Commonwealth of Virginia comes to us from the Circuit Court of Chesterfield County. 

The first question that will undoubtedly come to mind for those who have stumbled across (or, one may dare to hope, deliberately come to read) this blog is “Why a Court of Appeals Blog?  If you are an appellate lawyer practicing in both of Virginia’s appellate courts, why limit yourself to just the Court of Appeals?”  The answer is simple – one does not reinvent the wheel, and Steve Emmert already has a Blog which more than adequately – I should say superlatively – covers the