Michael Jonthan Garland Saunders v. Commonwealth of Virginia

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• opining that courts lack jurisdiction to enter a criminal judgment upon a statute that is facially unconstitutional
• holding based on the status of the - 11 - declarants that a hearsay report from “one social worker, a government official, to another” provided “evidence of reliability” and thus “possess[ed] ‘substantial guarantees of trustworthiness’” (quoting Henderson, 285 Va. at 327)
• setting out “evidence of substantial similarities between past offenses and the new accusations” as one example “of an indicia of reliability of testimonial hearsay”
• “Generally, a judgment in a criminal case may not be attacked collaterally.” (quoting Eagle, Star & Brit. Dominions Inc. Co. v. Heller, 149 Va. 82, 100 (1927))
• “Evidence consisting of ‘a report from one social worker, a government official, to another’ is evidence of reliability and possesses ‘substantial guarantees of trustworthiness.’” (quoting Henderson, 285 Va. at 327)

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).