No bail for accused driver in 70-pound marijuana plot in Montgomery County roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
CHRISTIANSBURG â Montgomery County is launching a new court program aimed at steering some defendants with mental health issues back to stability â and away from incarceration.
Later this month, a special court session called a Behavioral Health Docket is to meet in the countyâs General District Court. An initial group of five defendants, all diagnosed with serious mental illness â but still deemed to be mentally competent legally â and convicted of minor, non-violent misdemeanor offenses will meet with a judge and a support team, probably twice each month for a year. They will receive mental health treatment and encouragement to establish a healthier, law-abiding routine in their lives.
Update: 1 tree-sitter removed from Mountain Valley Protest protest site roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Radford and Pulaski County joined the list of Virginia court systems approved to re-launch jury trials after their halt last March in response to the pandemic.
But even if the state legalizes pot, students may want to think twice before toking up on campus.
Schools must still ban any use of cannabis â even medical marijuana â on college grounds, in keeping with federal laws like the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1989. That dynamic means students who may not be doing anything the state finds illegal could still be punished by a state agency.
âThat was the real fear with a lot of these students, what the school was going to do with them, versus whether the legal system would handle it or not,â Brad McConnell, a Blacksburg-based defense attorney, said about drug cases in recent years. âI used to tell these parents down here that would call me, âHey, you need to be calling the administration.â Itâs really overly punitive. Youâve got a kid caught with three or four grams of marijuana getting suspended from school when itâs being taken under advisement by the court.â