Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Underdog

Criminal Law

: Underdog

The land of probations before judgment and suspended impositions of sentences.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). No matter how out-of-balance I have found Maryland's criminal justice system -- as to the rights of the criminally accused -- Virginia is heavily an even less hospitable place.  Virginia is eminently worse than Maryland in the realm of discovery, alone. In Virginia District Court, mandatory criminal discovery is practically non-existent, and is limited to defendants' statements to law enforcement, the defendant's criminal record, and Brady/exculpatory evidence (except that the prosecutor ordinarily is the sole person to decide what evidence is exculpatory, which is like having the fox guard the henhouse). Va. Sup. Ct. Rule 7C:5. Moreover, the governing court rules require seeking, pretrial, a discovery order even to be able to obtain Rule 7C:5 discovery...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on December 24, 2009 (boomark / email).