Tuesday, November 9
Big bucks for Virginia
Virginia is sitting on a pot of money for the first time in four years. Members of the General Assembly today met at the Boar’s Head Inn to discuss what to do with the cash. The bulk of the bounce in revenue results from Northern Virginia cashing in on huge increases in federal defense and homeland security spending. During the meeting, economists told attending lawmakers that NoVa’s boom should funnel about $900 million into Virginia’s economy, according to a Washington Post account. At the meeting, some budget gurus stressed that even with money to spend, the State must resist the “spending spree” of the late ’90s.
Wednesday, November 10
Talking about Jefferson School
The final product of the Jefferson School Oral History Project was today presented to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Historical Society. The project is a collection of essays and interviews with 35 people, many of whom graduated from the Jefferson School. “Various advocacy groups interested in saving the historic school building from development” pulled together for the effort, according to the publication. The Jefferson School, when it opened in 1926, was the only city high school that black students could attend. Though it was closed for any educational purposes two years ago, City Council continues to ponder its future use. “I would like to make a plea to the community not to tear the school down,” says Jefferson School graduate Helen Sanders in the document.
Court to AG: open up
Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused a request by Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore to keep secret documents related to Earl Washington, a retarded man who was wrongly convicted of a 1982 Culpeper murder. The ruling satisfies requests by Washington’s lawyers and several news outlets to see the documents, which are part of a civil case Washington has filed against state police and other law enforcement officials.
Thursday, November 11
More green in Albemarle
Albemarle County officials today announced the creation of a new park. Measuring just under one square mile in area, the park in the northwest portion of the county will be Albemarle’s biggest—comprising 23 percent of the county’s total parkland. Robert Byrom, who donated the land for the park, requested it be dubbed the Patricia Ann Byrom Forest Preserve Park. Located on the north side of Route 810, between Brown’s Cove and Boonesville, the park will include nature trails.
Friday, November 12
AM 1450 on the way?
In yet another development in the city’s rapidly shifting broadcast media scene, a Kentucky-based company has applied for a new local radio station. Anderson Communications seeks to bring AM 1450 to the airwaves and plans to locate its transmitter on Z-95’s existing tower, located near McIntire Park. Anderson’s application is available for public review at the main branch of the public library. The company also owns an FM radio station in Kentucky.
Saturday, November 13
Weed pulls off the gloves
In a letter published in today’s Daily Progress, failed Congressional candidate Al Weed sharply challenged the paper’s post-election “told you so” endorsement of Fifth District incumbent Virgil Goode, whose resounding loss in Charlottesville and Albemarle was more than balanced by his hefty win in the Southside counties. Noticeably short on specifics, the Nov. 9 editorial lauded
Goode for not being a liberal. Cataloging his differences with Goode point by point, from deficit spending to abortion rights, Weed challenged the DP to pinpoint why Goode’s positions “are more appropriate than those of his opponent” in the future. “When next you endorse Mr. Goode because of his affinity with the District’s voters (though not with your readers and subscribers) you might also discuss with which of his well-articulated policies you agree…” Weed wrote.
Sunday, November 14
Great day to be a Hokie
After UVA’s heartbreaking 31-21 loss yesterday to Miami before another record-setting crowd at Scott Stadium, the state’s best hope for an ACC champ may rest with Virginia Tech, which, like Miami, is new to the conference this year and which heads into the week with the leading ACC record (4-1). Following the loss, the Cavs dropped to 18 from 10 in the AP rankings, which boosted the Hokies one notch to 15.
From Guv to Prez?
Though Mark Warner is mum on his political future as he enters his final year as governor, The Washington Post today floats the idea of a national candidacy for Warner heading into 2008. Among Warner’s political assets cited in Michael D. Shear’s article is the “NASCAR-loving, pro-death penalty, pro-gun rights, fiscally conservative campaign” that first lifted the blue pol to the top job in this red state.
Monday, November 15
Casteen’s big bucks
Among presidents of public colleges and universities, UVA’s John Casteen III ranks ninth in compensation, making $549,783, according to a survey released today by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports.
Clinic wins on appeal
Planned Parenthood will stay put—for now
“You’ve gotta give them credit,” says Tobey Bouch, a member of a local conservative Christian group, the Central Virginia Family Forum.
The 25-year-old Bouch stood outside the Albemarle County Office Building last Tuesday, November 9, hands on his hips, as people wearing “I support Planned Parenthood” stickers teemed around him.
“No doubt about it,” said Bouch. “They mobilized their people.”
On Tuesday, November 9, hundreds of people descended on the corner of McIntire Road and Preston Avenue while Albemarle County’s Board of Zoning Appeals considered a challenge to a new Planned Parenthood clinic that opened on Hydraulic Road in August. The appeal was filed later that month by Renae Townsend, who lives near the clinic. In a 3-1 decision, with one member abstaining, the five-member BZA ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood.
The BZA is appointed by the Circuit Court and typically hears arguments over building setbacks or the size of restaurant signs. On Tuesday, the board found itself the referees in a reproductive rights schoolyard brawl.
“I think there’s a lot of people who felt stunned by the election results,” said Planned Parenthood of Virginia’s Executive Director David Nova. “Now we’re hearing about a mandate to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is an opportunity to debunk that message.”
Expecting a large crowd, the BZA moved from its usual 50-seat meeting spot to the County Office Building’s 580-seat auditorium. County police officers roamed the lobby, and pro-choice activists were already taking seats at 10am—three hours before the meeting was scheduled to start.
The room was already overflowing by 12:30, when Josh Rubinstein climbed the pale stone staircase outside the Office Building. “If this is the last place on earth where a woman has a choice, we’ll fight for it,” said Rubinstein, who lives in Crozet. “We’re not going to let people from out of town tell us how to run our county.”
Like Planned Parenthood, the CVFF recruited supporters from around the state to descend on the hearing. Planned Parenthood estimated that 961 supporters turned out for its cause; CVFF put the number of its supporters at around 175.
It began with the lawyers. Townsend’s attorney, Culpeper lawyer Michael Sharman, argued that the clinic is a hospital, not a professional office, and thus should not have been allowed in a residential area. (It’s ironic, several pro-choicers noted, because the facility was built to accommodate the hospital-like architectural requirements that Planned Parenthood expects pro-lifers will eventually force through the General Assembly.)
County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Kamptner countered that Townsend had appealed too late. He said the County was correct when it determined the clinic was a professional office, like other out-patient medical centers.
Meanwhile, police moved through the crowded aisles, herding spectators out of the auditorium. Their explanation that jammed aisles constituted a fire hazard did not satisfy some people. “Gentlemen!” cried one woman. “How can this be a public hearing when you’re ejecting people who want to be a part of it!”
Those who exited lined the sidewalks outside and waved pro-choice signs at passing traffic. Those who stayed grew increasingly unruly as Sharman called people to speak in the appellants’ favor.
Bow-tied UVA medical student Steve Smith, whose property abuts the clinic, drew a round of hisses when he called it “a dumpster of a medical center,” and asked if the board were ready to “answer for their decision” should he or his property be hurt by an attack on the clinic.
Planned Parenthood called out local heavy-hitters, such as Virginia National Bank CEO Mark Giles, to speak on its behalf. As the public hearing opened for public comment, the topic shifted from zoning to abortion. Jack Marshall, who sits on Planned Parenthood’s Board of Directors, pointed out that Joe Scheidler’s 1985 pro-life manual CLOSED: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion tells Christian activists how to fight Planned Parenthood clinics with zoning challenges.
By 6pm, everyone had their say, and the auditorium was half-empty when the board rendered its decision.
“I was a sheriff in 1970, and I worked an abortion case where two babies were murdered, I thought,” said board member
George Bailey. “I sent people to the penitentiary over it. That’s still on my mind. I’d like to abstain,” he said.
Board member Richard Cogan basically agreed with the appellants, while members David Bass, Max Kennedy and Randy Rinehart said the County’s original zoning decision should stand.
After the decision, CVFF’s Bouch, Townsend and a few of their supporters stood around Sharman as the attorney outlined their long-term strategy: appeal to the County Circuit Court, then to the Court of Appeals if necessary, and perhaps the Supreme Court. On Friday, November 5, Townsend and five of her neighbors filed a lawsuit against Albemarle County, seeking to revoke Planned Parenthood’s special use permit.
“The higher up you go, the wider the effect of the decision will be,” Sharman said. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
Planned Parenthood organizer Holly Hatcher says she hopes pro-choice activists will now focus their energy on the upcoming General Assembly session. Commenting on CVFF’s lawsuit, Nova says “if they want to keep trying to shut down Planned Parenthood, the County’s going to need a bigger auditorium.”—John Borgmeyer
Buying time
Andrew Alston gets three years in prison for killing Walker Sisk
Virginia throws the book at its criminals. Unless, that is, the accused is able to fork up enough cash to hire an expensive legal team that can exploit the built-in protections of the law, such as the concept of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
That’s what happened on the evening of November 9 when, after hearing defense arguments rich in expensive expert testimony and forensic evidence, but with no compelling eyewitnesses for the defense, a jury of three women and nine men found former UVA student Andrew Alston guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than the second-degree murder charge the prosecution had sought in Alston’s killing of Walker Sisk, 22, a volunteer firefighter and Free Union resident. The following afternoon, the jury sentenced Alston, 22, to three years in prison, one year of which he has already served in jail while awaiting his trial. Based on his behavior behind bars, Alston could be back on the street by as early as August 2006.
Witnesses say the altercation that ended Sisk’s life began after Sisk and one of Alston’s companions exchanged insults across 14th Street after a night of barhopping on the Corner in the early morning hours of November 8, 2003. The incident escalated as Sisk crossed the street to confront Alston’s group, but the fatal step was taken by Alston when, according to his own testimony, he “pulled out a knife.”
The defense, headed by swarthy, cowboy-booted Alexandria attorney John Zwerling, known for defending Lorena Bobbitt and other high-profile clients, said Alston pulled the knife to defend himself from Sisk, whom Alston described, between the loudly quivering breaths that characterized his testimony, as a “furious man, crazy.”
Moments after Alston pulled the knife, Sisk lay dying near the corner of 14th and Wertland streets, stabbed and slashed 20 times, the lethal wound penetrating his left lung and heart.
Outside Judge Edward L. Hogshire’s courtroom on the afternoon of November 10, just after sentencing Alston, jury foreman Juandiego Wade said the jury felt they had made the decision that was “best for the community.”
During closing arguments on the previous day, Zwerling had walked the jury through its options. Zwerling held up a placard enumerating what a “not guilty” verdict encompasses. The bullet points went up the scale from a belief in the defendant’s innocence to the belief that the defendant “is guilty but the evidence falls short.” Shortly following Zwerling’s presentation, the jury went into deliberations.
During the five-and-a-half hour wait for a verdict, friends and family of both Sisk and Alston congregated in the lobby of the courthouse and on its front steps, talking, smoking, resting and occasionally laughing. When word spread that a decision had been reached, both groups reconvened in the courtroom. The room received the manslaughter verdict in utter silence.
In his emotional testimony, Alston, crying at times, recounted what memory he said he had of the events after he pulled his knife: “[Sisk] grabbed [the knife] out of my hand and then he lunged at me with it.” Alston, claiming that he feared for his life, said he then grabbed Sisk’s hand and “just kept pushing away from me.” According to Alston, the 20 stabs and cuts to Sisk were delivered by Sisk’s own hand.
Key to this seemingly absurd explanation was the defense team’s assertion that when Alston attempted to protect himself from the knife-wielding Sisk he had used aikido moves learned in an eight-week martial arts class. Through a demonstration by Alston’s former aikido instructor and classmate, the defense used perfectly choreographed maneuvers to account for the pattern of wounds across Sisk’s, chest, shoulders and back. Later, forensics experts, whose testimony cost at least $20,000, confirmed the plausibility of the scene despite the fact that Alston’s blood-alcohol level just after the time of the assault was more than two times the legal limit. No eyewitnesses testified to seeing any such aikido moves.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jon R. Zug didn’t buy this theory. In his closing arguments the charismatic prosecutor asked the jury how, if Alston was such an aikido master, did Sisk get the weapon out of Alston’s hands in the first place?
“Where was your aikido then, buddy?” Zug asked, his voice rising as he turned from the jury to face Alston.
The jury, however, took the bait, going with the lesser charge.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, the prosecution’s case was simple. Zug presented the jury with a stack of papers that detailed Alston’s prior felony and misdemeanor assault convictions for a 1998 attack, when Alston was a juvenile. The purpose was clear: to establish a pattern of violent behavior.
The defense, however, called a number of character witnesses—friends, family, Catholic priests from Alston’s Pennsylvania private school, and Alston’s psychotherapist. Many of these witnesses talked about the June 2002 suicide of Alston’s brother, Timothy, and how Alston served as a source of strength for his family around the time of that event. His psychotherapist, Dr. Marilyn Minrath, whom he started seeing in June, said Alston suffers from “unresolved grief.” The jury spent five hours deliberating Alston’s sentence. Upon hearing the words “three years,” Alston hugged both his lawyers. Sisk’s family and friends sat stunned. Later, when he was led out the back of the courthouse, Alston smiled and joked with Sheriff’s deputies before heading back to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail.
In front of the courthouse, the Alston family went their separate ways before Sisk’s friends and family began to emerge from the courtroom.
While praising the jury’s “thoughtfulness,” Zug expressed disappointment with the sentence.
“It’s tough for me to believe that the life of somebody is only worth three years,” he said, looking weary.
Greg Snyder, a Sisk friend who had helped to change Walker Sisk’s diapers, stood smoking a cigarette on the steps of the courthouse.
“There’s no explanation,” he said quietly, “but that there was a proportion to punishment that was not followed today.”—Nell Boeschenstein
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America, can we talk?
UVA’s Vamik Volkan shrinks America’s head
America, I’m coming to you as a friend. I understand you’ve had a hard time recently. You’re under a lot of stress.
You’re a great country, but let’s face it—you have some anger management issues. And lately you’ve been spending more time with those people who stand on the street corner, screaming about the end of the world.
We love you, America. Frankly, though, we’re worried.
Maybe you need professional help.
Let me recommend someone you can talk to. His name is Vamik Volkan. He’s a Turkish doctor and professor emeritus at UVA, and in 1987 he founded what is perhaps the school’s funkiest offshoot—The Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction.
Volkan’s larger claim to fame, however, has been his work in the field of psychopolitics. For the past two decades, he has studied large-group psychologies and the dynamics of mass movements.
Two years ago, he founded a publishing company in Charlottesville, Pitchstone, which just released Volkan’s new book, Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror.
America, wait! Don’t get mad. Look, I know you don’t care much for books. I’ll admit, Volkan’s no Tim LaHaye, but give him a chance. Volkan’s a pretty smart guy, and he just might be able to help you.
Between 1980 and 1986, Volkan sat in on a series of unofficial dialogues between Israel and Egypt as a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. The group investigated the psychological aspects of the long-running conflicts between Arabs and Jews. Since then, he’s participated in negotiations all over the world between all kinds of people who passionately hate each other.
America, give Volkan a chance. On a recent afternoon he and I sat in his living room, decorated with the kind of large brass trays on which Turkish people serve meals to big groups. Volkan explained exactly what he would say to you, America, if you would just go talk to him.
“Every enemy is real,” says Volkan. “They’re shooting at you. But there’s also a fantasy. We project ideas onto our enemy.”
Admit it, America. Both you and Al-Qaeda are guilty of this. The “great Satan” is on par with “either you’re with us or with the terrorists,” don’t you think? Huh, maybe?
On September 11, America, we took a terrible hit. In our collective pain and helplessness, Volkan says, we naturally started dwelling on past humiliations, like Pearl Harbor, and imagined all the bad things that might happen to us next. In these times of fear, individuals tend to identify closely with their large groups—they become more “American” or more “Muslim.” People also tend to look to their leaders as “saviors” who, like a father, might protect them from unseen threats.
America and Al-Qaeda are similar, Volkan says, in that both of their leaders claim to be inspired by God.
“Gods do not negotiate,” says Volkan. “They only give you permission to kill the devil. Both sides start talking about a clash of civilizations, and the talk is what makes it real.”
America, you know Al-Qaeda isn’t going to disappear, or negotiate. There’s no simple solution. Yet Volkan suggests a good start might be letting go of all the lofty rhetoric about gods and monsters, good and evil, and to stop listening to those crazies scream about Armageddon.
Relax, America. Take a deep breath. Lie down on Volkan’s couch and forget for a while about the liberals, conservatives, terrorists, fascists, homosexuals and zealots lurking in the shadows.
“When you actually go out and talk to people,” says Volkan, “they’re pretty much all the same.”—John Borgmeyer