On the Juvenile Court judgeship in the 28th

I understand that the General Assembly, or at least the House of Delegates, voted to appoint Joe Lyle who practices here in Bristol to the new seat on the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court for the 28th District. Congratulations to Joe, who started out at about the same time that I did, and has been a good guy to know these many years.

Heard from an oral argument

One of my friends arguing recently before the Virginia Supreme Court said this:

"The train had already come, it had run over me, and I'm trying to save the case, at the very last stage."

I guess we've all been there.

Ten children and one skillet

In the book "The Minor Family of Virginia," published in 1923, my favorite entry has always been this one:

As it turns out, James Minor Quarles was also a member of Congress from 1859 to 1861, an officer during the Civil War in the infantry regiment led by his brother William A. Quarles (who was taken prisoner twice), and a state court judge again after the war.

Somehow, I can relate better now to "10 children and one skillet" than when I first read this book years ago.

It pays to poll the jury

In Webb v. Com., the Court of Appeals in a published opinion by Judge Annunziata reversed and remanded the sentence imposed in a drug case, where the sentence was thirty years plus a half million dollar fine, because when the jurors were polled as to whether that was their verdict on sentencing, one of them said "no." The Court also ruled that the issue was not waived by failure to take it up while the trial court could have acted on it, even though it did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation.