Williams v. Commonwealth

COLEMAN, Judge.

In this appeal, we consider for the first time in Virginia whether a trial court may permit a juror in a criminal case to submit a question to be asked of a defense witness. The trial court received a juror’s question in writing, read the question in open court in the presence of counsel, the jury, and the witnesses, and then permitted counsel to ask additional questions in order to clarify the uncertainty in the evidence described by the juror’s question. The trial judge did not inform counsel of the content or nature of the question before reading it. We hold that the trial…