The case of a former Henrico County drug investigator who has accused the county’s police chief and other top law-enforcement officers of destroying his career is moving closer to a possible trial. In a 21-page ruling released this week, a substitute judge hearing the case in Hanover County refused to dismiss key elements of a suit filed in August 2008 in which Williams G. “Trip” Hueston III seeks more than $1 million in damages.

Election Day maneuvering is getting into full swing in Henrico County—for November 2011. Former Richmond prosecutor Matthew P. Geary said yesterday that he plans to run for commonwealth’s attorney in Henrico, an announcement that comes more than two years before the term of incumbent Wade A. Kizer expires. Both men will be running as Republicans, they said.

The son of Henrico County’s chief prosecutor will serve a jail term for underage possession of alcohol but escaped a felony charge yesterday of malicious wounding. In a 10-minute Henrico General District Court proceeding that did not include testimony from the arresting officer, a substitute judge dropped a malicious-wounding charge against Samuel Raines Kizer but sentenced him to 30 days in jail, with 15 days suspended, on the possession charge.

A parade of co-workers and family members described Kellyann J. Wright yesterday as a heroic person who persevered under the toll of multiple sclerosis with an unselfish devotion to others. And in a stirring, minutes-long testimony to her love for her children, the 41-year-old mother of 4-year-old twin boys swore she will champion a cure for the disease for the rest of her life.

A team of Henrico County prosecutors isn’t letting what’s written in stone bog down a murder case. Retired teacher Colette Lynn Lockard, 61, is buried at Quantico National Cemetery. Her tombstone, next to that of her late, Korean War veteran husband, says that she died on July 11, 2005. But in an hourlong opening argument yesterday, Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Wade Kizer said Lockard, in fact, died June 29 that year, killed by her son with a shotgun blast to her back that “shredded her spine,“ according to medical testimony yesterday.

State officials want to take the sex out of texting. In addition to lecturing teenagers across the state on the dangers of sending nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves to friends via cell phones, some legislators are looking into how the state’s laws cover—or don’t cover—“sexting.“ The pictures, which apparently have been pinging off cell towers around the Richmond area, pose challenges for prosecutors who seek guidance in the Virginia Code. State law says some of the instances could constitute manufacturing child pornography.

A million-dollar lawsuit against Henrico County’s top prosecutor, chief of police and three ranking police officers is waiting for a final decision by a judge on whether it can proceed to trial. Judge Jay T. Swett, an Albemarle County judge assigned to preside over the case in Hanover County Circuit Court, declined to rule yesterday on whether to allow the suit filed by Henrico police veteran William G. “Trip” Hueston III to move forward.

Henrico County authorities revealed yesterday that the only gun taken from a Watts Lane home where a 2-year-old boy supposedly shot himself Sunday was a .22-caliber rifle. Henrico police and Commonwealth’s Attorney Wade Kizer declined to add further details about items recovered from 1904 Watts Lane on Sunday night or about how Kristofer Jefferson suffered a fatal bullet wound there.