BLACK DEFENDANT + PORTRAITS OF WHITE JUDGES = UNFAIR TRIAL First Louisa, now Fairfax. As reported by VoxFairfax on September 21, 2020 (The Shot Heard Round the Old Dominion, https://wp.me/p9wDCF-1Mf), a Louisa County circuit judge ruled on a motion by attorneys… Read More ›
prosecutors
Briefly Noted
Editors’ Note: This town is about 50 miles from the site of the Tennessee refrigerated morgue trucks noted in our article of 12/7/2020 [https://wp.me/p9wDCF-23E]. COMMONWEALTH’S LARGEST NURSING HOME SEES COVID OUTBREAK In Big Stone Gap, VA, the ladies inside a… Read More ›
Around the Novahood
FAIRFAX JUDGE RULES CASH BOND UNCONSTITUTIONAL A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge has found that keeping an indigent defendant in jail in lieu of a cash bond is unconstitutional, writing that it violates the Constitution’s Due Process Clause by forcing… Read More ›
Ethics and Governance
That “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion” is a well-known, often spoken proverb. It means simply that an individual in the public forum must avoid attracting negative attention or scrutiny. This saw is employed as a criterion of ethical behavior or conduct above and beyond that… Read More ›
Around the Novahood
LOUDOUN INVITES UNIONS In the footsteps of Portsmouth (see last week’s VoxFairfax, Brief Cases), the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has invited unions to speak with county employees as a first step toward unionizing. Prior state law prohibited union organizing… Read More ›
A Litmus Test for All Seasons?
A map view of Henrico County, VA, shows it, like a set of water wings, atop Richmond as home ground for its 325,000 residents, 59% of whom are white and 31% of whom are Black. The county’s five-person Board of… Read More ›
Responsibility v. Immunity
Few, if any, will deny that each individual owes some duty of care to neighbors and the community at large. That responsibility may be expressed in a myriad of ways including, among others, paying taxes, voting, respecting street and road… Read More ›
The Shot Heard Round the Old Dominion
Our title is a paraphrase of a very familiar refrain written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 in a poem Concord Hymn, commemorating the first round of fire in the American Revolution in Concord, Mass. The term has been applied… Read More ›
Gideon’s Trumpet Continues to Blare
Unlike Gideon’s biblical victory over a larger army (Judges 7:16-22), neither Virginia’s nor the nation’s criminal justice system has succeeded to a clear and convincing standard of equal justice for all. Virginia’s experience with the frailties and inconsistencies of its… Read More ›
Brief Cases
WATER BALLOONS DAMPEN CIVIC DISCUSSION It was all set. Richmond residents, local elected officials, and community organizers gathered on the medians on Monument Avenue to discuss citywide issues, including public safety and criminal justice, mental health and healthcare, housing, and… Read More ›