Charlottesville Divorce Lawyer Rob Hagy

Local Teen Found Not Guilty in Bomb Plot

As reported by the Daily Progress, an Albemarle County jury found a 13-year-old boy not guilty of conspiring to blow up two local high schools and kill students in an alleged Columbine-style attack.  This case was an appeal of the boy's conviction in the Albemarle County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.  Given the description of the evidence in the article, I applaud the decision by the young man's attorneys to choose a jury trial.  As opposed to adult trials, where the jury determines guilt or innocence and sentences a defendant, a juvenile accused of a felony may choose a trial by jury and enjoy the benefit of being sentenced by the judge who has as his disposal a greater number of sentencing possibilities.  However, there are instances where a Commonwealth's attorney may move to have a juvenile tried as an adult and in that instance the jury sentences as it would in a normal adult case.  Back to the selection of trial by jury, I imagine it would have been difficult for a group of adults to convict a thirteen year old on the facts as described in the article.  But, I sympathize with the Commonwealth's Attorney.  Given the horrors of Columbine, no Commonwealth's Attorney would want something similar happening on his watch.  I'm sure they believed the best policy was to seek a conviction to deter future conduct similar to that engaged in by this boy.

Local Juvenile Bomb Plot Brings Home the Realities of Police Tactics

Once again, the public's concern over police investigation techniques and how those are applied to children was evident in this week's issue of the Hook.  The editorial section of the paper features a letter by a local resident lamenting the fact that parents have had to instruct their children not to cooperate with the authorities.  She makes several suggestions for how the police should deal with children and juveniles.  Her suggestions also highlight some of the popular misconceptions parents have about police interactions with their children.  She suggests that the police should be present when children are questioned.  This is important because children have no right to have a parent present when they are questioned. Unless some other constitutional right is violated, the fact that a parent is not present when a child is questioned does not render that child's statement inadmissible in any subsequent criminal proceeding.

ABA Family Law Quarterly Update

The Spring 2006 issue of the Family Law Quarterly, a publication of the Section of Family Law of the American Bar Association, deals with the issue of third party rights and obligations concerning children.  This issue has come up recently in Virginia.  In the published opinion of Surles v. Mayer, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled that a man who lived with and had a daughter with a woman could petition the court for visitation with the woman's son from a previous marriage.