During the day-to-day drama in his courtroom, Judge Robert Bruce Spencer Jr. would peer over half-frame reading glasses as he heard cases from speeding tickets to landlord-tenant disputes. “When those glasses would slide to the tip of his nose, lawyers and defendants knew there was going to be trouble,“ said his son, Robert Bruce Spencer III of Powhatan County.

Preview a Sunday report on how Virginia judges are selected and evaluated.

A Chesterfield County judge will keep his job despite efforts by a county lawmaker to have him bounced for allegedly questionable conduct, including keeping a novelty noisemaker in his courtroom. Circuit Judge Timothy J. Hauler last night was backed for another term by a Senate Courts of Justice subcommittee named to hear complaints by Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield.

In 1942 after the United States had entered World War II, Dyer Justice “Dick” Taylor was weeks away from graduation as a Navy pilot in Corpus Christi, Texas. One day while he was flying in formation, someone clipped his plane’s wing, said a daughter, Janet Savia of Fredericksburg. His plane plummeted and burned. Struggling to escape the conflagration, he got caught in the door of his plane and caught fire.