Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

Re: harrassing neighbor

"Take her to court for harrassment(sic)", you say? I don't think so as I'm not aware of any statutes in the Commonwealth which criminalize conduct which might be described as harassment.

Threats to do bodily harm, stalking behaviour on the part of this unneighborly neighbor, these could well provide a basis for criminal prosecution but not simply conduct on the part of this neighbor which you characterize as harassment and which might conceivably include this neighbor calling your wife something akin to an overweight floosy, to put it somewhat more delicately.

Furthermore, the idea of your hiring a private dick to videotape a staged confrontation between this neighbor and your wife with the latter wearing a wire in the hope of recording incriminating evidence against the former, I'm afraid, approaches the ludicrous, and would only likely exacerbate an already bad situation between you and the neighbor. In short, I would forget this idea completely in favor of cultivating a mode of behaviour on your part with respect to your unruly neighbor which might be described as "benign neglect", (now that Watergate and the former Nixon administration are back in the news)while being alert at the same time to any real conduct such as stalking or criminal threats by this neighbor which might indeed be something that you would want to(and should) bring to the attention of the local prosecutor's office.