Virginia Court Cases

Are you searching for records of Virginia court cases? You are in luck because over the years, it has become much easier. Every county court in the state will have its share of Virginia court cases, and there are records that are maintained in the state archives as well. In fact, all Virginia court cases may be available in a single database.

Public records are known to have been kept since before the War of Independence, certainly before 1790; however, courthouses were not too well organized then. There were no computers and no Internet.

Besides the technology gap, there was the geographical one as well. The United States had fewer people, living farther apart from each other, in towns that were not too well connected. Now with the Internet around, communication has gone online and records of Virginia courts cases can also be accessed on the Web.

Court records weren’t too well maintained in the past. The federal government kept its own set of records, such as those regarding federal crimes. Local courthouses maintained records of civil and criminal cases, marriages, births and deaths – and not always either.

Storage spaces were also not good – there might have been many Virginia court cases that must have been destroyed. Finally, if you were an outsider, you might not know precisely which courthouse had heard which Virginia court cases.

It took decades to recognize the real need to maintain proper public records. It became mandatory for all births, deaths and marriages to be recorded with a courthouse. So, Virginia State court cases were still recorded and kept at the courthouses, but now states kept county-level records also.

That was how the system worked till 1960, when the US Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act. This Act made these records legally available to the public – access to any public record, including those of the State of Virginia court cases, became every citizen’s right. You can therefore access Virginia court cases (or for that matter all public records) relating to any issue that you want to access.

The right to view Virginia court cases at any Virginia courthouse belongs to you as it does to all US citizens. There are just two exceptions – some records are ruled confidential by statute, and there are library circulation records that might not be accessible. They are still just a minority of all VA court cases.

As for federal privacy laws, it is worth bearing in mind that they are not binding on records of Virginia court cases; this is true except for those which were created using funding from the federal government, and are regulated by specific federal mandates.

The county and circuit courts keep records on civil and criminal cases. These records are sometimes forwarded to the state, often in summary form. This means that they may not contain all the information that was in the original file. State court records are kept with those of the Department of Justice and State Supreme Court.

As for information you are allowed to access, it includes names of litigating parties, city, case number, date of birth, trial date, charge, and case disposition in detail for all court cases in the Circuit and District Courts. You will have to apply to the clerk of the courthouse who can then give you what you need. Or, you can ask for it over the phone as well, and the clerk will then forward you your copy for a fee.

The amount of historical data may vary by jurisdiction, depending on when the records management system introduced automation in archiving, and how it has since evolved in each jurisdiction.

There is an easier way for you to access records of Virginia court cases. There are some websites such as http://www.courts.state.va.us/caseinfo/http://www.peoplepublicrecords.org/home.html and public search engines on the Internet where you can access the records quicker and with fewer hassles too. So, you may want to order them from the Internet as well.