Tuesday, August 31
Pointed evidence
Lawyers for Andrew Alston, a former UVA student accused of stabbing Walker Sisk to death in November, succeeded in prohibiting Alston’s juvenile criminal record from being used during cross examination in his upcoming trial, according to today’s Daily Progress. However, the court ruled that prosecutors may discuss Alton’s alleged knife-carrying habits.
Richmond swamped
Floodwaters today receded in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom district, the downtown neighborhood that was engulfed by a 10-foot wall of water on Monday afternoon, leaving collapsed buildings, and cars stacked on top of each other. The disaster was caused by tropical storm Gaston, which dumped a foot of water on the Richmond area, surprising meteorologists who had predicted no more than four inches of rain. At least eight people were killed in the torrent, and damages are expected to top $15 million, according to The Washington Post (later estimates put the damages at $60 million). In response to the flood, Gov. Mark Warner, who today toured the 25 square blocks that received the brunt of the flooding, issued a declaration of emergency and has asked for federal clean-up funds.
Wednesday, September 1
Help wanted?
The Charlottesville area boosted its number of jobs by 17.4 percent in the last decade, outpacing the state’s rate of job growth, according to a report released today by the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. But the report also tagged the “troublesome trend” of a recent decrease of jobs in the private sector, which now sports 1,057 fewer employees than it did in 2000. Hardest hit were manufacturing jobs, a net 2,295 of which were lost locally since 2000. The transportation and information sector also cut jobs in recent years, according to the report.
Thursday, September 2
Kilgore’s no girlyman
Virginia’s Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, who is attending the Republican National Convention, checked in with the folks back home in a conference call today with reporters. “John Kerry realizes he cannot take Virginia from us,” Kilgore said on the call, citing an AP story that claimed Kerry’s campaign had skipped Virginia in recent ad buys. “The Virginia delegation is excited,” Kilgore said. “We’re pumped up.” Kilgore’s NYC swing included a primo invite to hang with First Lady Laura Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in President Bush’s box on Tuesday night.
Friday, September 3
Before the flood
During a particularly fierce season for hurricanes and tropical storms, the State Corporation Commission (SCC) of Virginia today warned, “Homeowner policies issued in Virginia generally do not provide coverage for damage to your home and belongings caused by floods and surface water whether or not they are caused by a hurricane.” The SCC encourages Virginians to check in with their home and car insurance companies to see what sort of bulked-up disaster insurance they may need. For people living in a floodplain, the SCC recommends purchasing flood insurance, which the Fed sells to eligible people through the National Flood Insurance Program.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports
Caught in the Act
Affirmation of Marriage Act claims its first victims
When marriages dissolve, it’s not unusual for children to become pawns in their parents’ squabbles. There’s not much difference between gay and straight marriages in this regard. What’s different is how Virginia courts treat children of gay parents, at a time when conservative politicians have made an election issue out of people’s private lives.
In July, House Bill 751, known as the Affirmation of Marriage Act, became law in Virginia. The law states the Commonwealth need not honor same-sex civil unions formed in other states.
Following the Bush Administration’s example of low-blow politics, Virginia Del. Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) crafted the bill to exploit homophobia. But when the law was first put to use last month, H.B. 751 was wielded not by angry fundamentalist Christians, but by a lesbian mother against her former partner.
On August 24, a Frederick County judge ruled that Lisa Miller-Jenkins was the sole parent of 2-year-old Isabella, effectively denying visitation rights to Isabella’s other parent, Janet—despite the fact that Janet and Lisa raised Isabella together as partners in a civil union.
Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins met in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1997. “We wanted to get married,” says Janet, “or as close as we could get.”
The couple were joined in civil union in Vermont in 2000, and they combined their last names with a hyphen. Lisa gave birth to Isabella in 2002, and the couple settled in Fair Haven, Vermont. But when the relationship turned sour, Lisa took Isabella back to Frederick County in September 2003.
As Lisa and Janet prepared to square off in court, both sides of the gay rights debate rallied to their respective corners. Anti-gay groups advised Lisa, who now claims to be a “former lesbian,” according to newspaper reports. Gay rights groups, including Richmond-based Equality Virginia, stepped in to advise Janet in a custody dispute that illustrates not only the political charge injected into gay domestic fights, but also the legal chaos caused by conflicting state marriage laws.
In June, a Vermont court awarded Lisa temporary custody of Isabella and gave Janet visitation rights in Virginia. But Janet claims Lisa never allowed her to spend time with Isabella alone, and Janet demanded more traditional visitation rights.
On July 1—the day H.B. 751 took effect in Virginia—Lisa filed a petition in Frederick County Circuit Court. On August 24, a Winchester judge ruled that Virginia had jurisdiction in this case, and that Isabella belonged only to Lisa, her “natural” mother.
Joseph Price, who is Janet’s attorney and a director on the board of Equality Virgina, says he plans to appeal immediately. “We think the judge got the analysis totally wrong,” Price says. “He was just making a political statement.”
Not surprisingly, Lisa’s lawyers disagree.
“We don’t feel the judge was politically biased,” says Peter Hansen, a Winchester attorney. “He was applying [the Affirmation of Marriage Act] that says Virginia need not enforce the rights or claims arising from same-sex marriage contracts.”
UVA psychologist Charlotte Patterson—a gay mother whose research on same-sex families is widely quoted—says that in divorce cases courts typically grant both straight parents some type of custody, even in cases involving child abuse and neglect, protecting what she calls “a child’s right to continue the important relationship with both parents.
“Children of gay and lesbian parents need these same kinds of protection,” says Patterson. House Bill 751 was designed to punish gay adults, “but it has the effectof punishing children who are likely to grow up heterosexual,” Patterson says.—John Borgmeyer
The Jamaican connection
Court documents expose JADE bust of Jamaican crack dealers
Local media have been captivated by the recent arrests of eight alleged members of the crack-dealing local gang the “Westside Crew” and the life sentences two Estes Street dealers received on August 30 for murder and drug convictions.
But newly released documents in the U.S. District Court in Charlottesville are a reminder that many of the area’s most active troublemakers, like the drugs they sell, come from far away. The Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) task force has netted at least eight alleged drug dealers with out-of-town roots this year—according to court records and news accounts—including two separate busts of Jamaican citizens.
The documents, filed by John L. Brownlee, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, colorfully depict one of these investigations, in which JADE detectives took down brothers Colin and Andrew Gordon, two Jamaicans with New York City-area drivers’ licenses. According to prosecutors’ accounts, the busts, which went down at two area hotels in January, included one major screw-up that resulted in detectives chasing and tackling one of the alleged crack dealers in a hallway in the English Inn.
The Gordons, whose cousin Noel Gordon was also arrested in the bust, were allegedly involved in a common practice in which Jamaican drug gangs bring “wholesale” amounts of powdered cocaine to Central Virginia from New York City, according to a report from the Department of Justice. Much of the cocaine is then converted into its crack form, distributed to lower-level dealers, and eventually sold on local streets.
In a search warrant, Detective Granville Fields, the lead JADE officer on the Gordon brothers case—who claims 12 years of experience in narcotics investigations and 500 arrests—writes that “out-of-town drug dealers will often ‘set up shop’ in hotel rooms,” using them to stash drugs, money and guns.
Colin Gordon had likely been in the Charlottesville area for some time. JADE officers had set up two drug buys between informants and Colin last October and November. And Colin, 35, who ran under the alias Christopher A. Donald and was known as “Jamaican P” or “Big Daddy,” had been pulled over for speeding in Charlottesville as far back as December 2002. He had apparently illegally re-entered the United States after being deported to Jamaica in 1997 for previous crimes, which include two drug felonies committed in Maryland and Connecticut.
To finally arrest Jamaican P, JADE first arranged “a controlled buy” from a woman drug dealer who relied on him for her supply of crack, according to court records. After getting pinched in the police buy on the night of January 20, the woman quickly agreed to buy drugs from Jamaican P in a sting at the English Inn. Getting a small-fry dealer to help police nab a serious drug supplier is a classic JADE tactic, also employed by many other vice squads and in crime dramas on TV. In this case, the scheme worked, with one glitch.
JADE took two adjacent rooms at the Inn, setting up the woman in one room and detectives and surveillance equipment next door. The two rooms were connected by a door, which, unfortunately for the JADE team, was apparently left unlocked during the bust.
The female drug dealer was working as a police informant from her digs in the English Inn during the early morning of Wednesday, January 21—just hours after being snared by the fuzz. She called Colin Gordon and a few of her customers, with cops listening to all the calls. After she told Gordon that she had buyers waiting for drugs, he agreed to come to her hotel room, according to prosecutors.
Gordon drove to the English Inn in his van. When he arrived, the woman threw her room key down to the parking lot so he could use a back door to the hotel, presumably to attract less attention.
After entering the room, Gordon may have known something was up, because he “very shortly thereafter” walked over to the door between the two rooms. When he turned the doorknob and opened the door, he saw a roomful of cops and snooping gear.
“Detectives tried to shut the door but their presence was thereafter compromised,” reads the understated legalese from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Police then burst into the informant’s room, but Gordon “pushed them aside” and ran out into the hallway. “It took four detectives to subdue the defendant,” prosecutors claim.
The English Inn did not return calls from C-VILLE about the hallway chaos that occurred that morning, so it’s uncertain whether other hotel guests may have peeked out their rooms to see police wrestling a dreadlocked Jamaican to the ground or if the hotel and cops had cleared the floor in anticipation of the sting.
According to detectives, when Gordon was on the ground, he threw a plastic bag that contained 16 grams of cocaine base, or crack, and two grams of cocaine powder. Among the items Gordon was carrying were $4,000 in cash, a “large amount” of jewelry, a fake New Jersey driver’s license and a room key for the Red Carpet Inn.
Detectives rushed to the Red Carpet Inn, which is on 29N, and arrested Andrew Gordon, 29, in room 207. After getting a search warrant for the room, detectives found an impressive stash, which included three-quarters of a pound of crack, a half-pound of powdered cocaine, $60,000 in cash, scales, razor blades, a nine-millimeter pistol and a .357 Magnum revolver. Investigators said the street value of the seized drugs was $140,000, according to an account by Reed Williams in The Daily Progress.
The drugs and guns brought a host of charges on the Gordon brothers, whose case is currently being hashed over in the U.S. District Court in Charlottesville. Also arrested in the bust, which a JADE officer says was likely the biggest local drug seizure in years, was the Gordon brothers’ cousin, Noel L. Gordon, who pleaded guilty to his charges in May, and will testify against his cousins in their eventual trial. If convicted, Colin, an illegal immigrant, faces a mandatory life sentence.—Paul Fain
Right to choose?
Pro-choice Republicans get louder this time at the RNC
In New York City last week, former Albemarle DelegatePaul C. Harris was true to the GOP, as always. He favorsan amendment to the Constitution that would outlawabortion, even if the pregnancy endangers the prospective mother’s life, even in cases of rape and incest, period. “Some won’t agree with the amendment, but the Republican Party has to do what is morally right in protecting the most innocent people in the country—our unborn fetuses,” says the Republican star, who may make a run for Virginia Attorney General in 2009. He and Commonwealth GOP Chair Kate Obenshain Griffin, both staunchly “pro-life,” were two Virginians on the Republican National Convention’s (RNC) platform committee. Not surprisingly, the platform approved during last week’s convention in New York echoed those of past years with a call for a “human life amendment,” not to mention an appeal to appoint judges who respect “the sanctity of innocent human life.”
Harris may believe the force of morality is on his side, but surveys suggest his views are out of line with the majority of Republicans, both in Virginia and throughout the nation. According to the Republican Majority for Choice (RMC), the principal pro-choice Republican advocacy group (as oxymoronic as that might sound), while many Republicans reject the “pro-choice” label, 73 percent believe that the abortion question should be a woman’s concern, not the government’s. And a 2003 poll conducted by Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Survey Research found that 67 percent of Virginians support a woman’s legal right to an abortion, a percentage that has remained relatively stable for the past seven years.
The RMC now refuses to remain a “silent majority,” and they made that clear during convention week. Jennifer Stockman (wife of former Reagan budget director David Stockman) and actress Dina Merrill co-chair the organization, formed from three separate PACs in 1999. And their Virginia chair Katherine Waddell emphasizes that pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion: “We support options including abstinence, prevention, motherhood, adoption and abortion,” she says.
During convention week, the group sponsored a swanky “Big Tent Celebration,” where Republicans could let their pro-choice hair down, schmoozing with the party’s relative moderates like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former governors Pete Wilson of California and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey.
Situated on the Met Life building’s 56th floor where partiers enjoyed some respite from the chaotic streets while taking in panoramic views of Manhattan, State Sen. H. Russell Potts, a Republican from Winchester whom the RMC recognized for his pro-choice record, said, “A terrible contradiction exists in the small government party that now wants to intrude on women’s lives.” For him, abortion is a personal issue between “a woman, her God and her doctor.”
Republicans for Choice, led by Alexandria resident Ann Stone, is another PAC that claims 150,000 members. Just before the start of the Republican National Convention, several Republicans for Choice members attended the March for Women’s Lives, where 25,000 reproductive rights supporters marched over the Brooklyn Bridge into lower Manhattan. Abortion should havenever become “a Republican/Democrat, liberal/conservative issue,” Stone says. “The debate is between those who trust women and those who don’t.”
Just as Emily’s List dedicates itself to electing pro-choice Democratic women to state and federal offices, the WISH List (Women in the Senate and House) supports pro-choice Republican female candidates and also hosted a convention breakfast fundraiser.
Post-convention, the question remains: Will pro-choice Republicans support Bush in November? The RMC and the WISH
List tolerate the platform’s exclusive language, while focusing their efforts on electing more of their kind to Congress.
Indeed, pro-choice Republicans seem to struggle with what they see as hypocrisy within their own party. “All week Republicans talked about personal freedom, the liberation of Afghan and Iraqi women,” Waddell says, “and yet here they are trying to restrict women’s reproductive rights.”—Laura McCandlish