RICHMOND, Virginia – The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a federal judge’s ruling denying former state Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry a new hearing. Loughry, who finished his federal prison sentence last week, had requested a new hearing based on a juror using social media during his 2018 trial. U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver had denied a new hearing, but Loughry’s attorneys appealed to the Fourth Circuit. A three-judge panel upheld Copenhaver’s ruling in a December 21 opinion. “The long and short of this case is that evidence indicates that Juror A had some pretrial exposure to news of the investigations of the West Virginia Supreme Court justices and participated modestly in the public dialogue via a few ‘likes’ and retweets on Twitter,” the panel wrote. “But evidence further indicates that she engaged in no prohibited contacts or communications during trial. As we have noted, social media does heighten the risk that jurors will be exposed to external information about the case, but here Loughry has failed to make a threshold showing that that risk was realized. In this case, all the evidence points to a fair trial. …