Month: February 2015

A handful of bills to reform gerrymandering died February 12 in a seven-person House of Delegates subcommittee by voice vote. Delegate Steve Landes (R-25th) was one of those voting to kill the bills. “Our districts are not gerrymandered,” he said. “They’re approved by the Department of Justice.”

The state constitution makes legislators responsible for drawing legislative and congressional lines,  said Landes. “My concern with the proposals we’ve seen is that they cede that responsibility to an unelected group.”

Another concern for Landes is that the bills call for nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions to draw the lines, and he just doesn’t think that’s possible. “It’s a laudable goal, but not realistic,” he said.

Brian Wheelock with OneVirginia21, a bipartisan group of prominent Virginians calling for fair redistricting, said a commission “would be less partisan than the General Assembly. It removes the conflict of interest from legislators drawing their own voter maps.” And while legislators “pat themselves on the back for ethics reform,” said Wheelock, gerrymandering is the most glaring ethics issue.

Two bills that passed the Senate survive in the House subcommittee. SJ284, carried by Republican Senator Jill Vogel and Democratic Senator Louise Lucas, is a constitutional amendment to establish a seven-member Virginia Redistricting Commission. Another Republican bill, SB840 doesn’t call for a commission, but provides guidelines for redistricting, such as compactness, contiguity and communities of interest, while prohibiting the use of political data to draw the lines. That, said Wheelock, would address Landes’ concern about an unelected group drawing the districts.

Of the surviving bills, Wheelock is not optimistic. “I have no illusions about their fate,” he said.

Meanwhile, a bill carried by Senator Bryce Reeves (R-17th) that moves nearly 11,000 Albemarle voters into new districts, which critics say will be more partisan, sails out of the same House Privileges and Elections committee and is poised to pass this week.

Twelve years ago this week, firefighters found Nola Charles and her toddler son William dead inside their burning Crozet home. Someone had duct taped Charles to her bed before stabbing her and slitting her throat. Three-year-old William had died of smoke inhalation. Three teens were convicted of the murders. All of them agree that one of them, Robert Davis, is innocent. Now, thanks to an investigation by Governor Terry McAuliffe’s parole board into what some legal experts believe was a flawed interrogation and a false confession, Davis is getting another shot at a pardon—his only hope for an early end to a 23-year sentence.

Davis has sought a pardon before, and failed. Last January, on his final day in office, Governor Robert McDonnell signed his name to a letter denying Davis’ petition for clemency more than a year after it was submitted, said Davis’ attorney Steve Rosenfield. McDonnell appointees never followed up on the petition, Rosenfield said.

But Davis’ second request is getting a different treatment. Governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration has pushed for a probe of Davis’ claims, according to Deputy Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Tonya Vincent. Her department oversees the Virginia State Parole Board, which examines clemency requests.

“I don’t think it was ever investigated under the previous administration,” Vincent said of Davis’ petition. “We have requested that they do a full investigation.”

Under pressure

The details of the early days of the investigation have been extensively reported by various news outlets since 2003, and are backed up by later affidavits: Within two days of the murders, 19-year-old Rocky Fugett and his 15-year-old sister Jessica admitted they played a role in the slaying of their across-the-street neighbor and her son. They also named two other Western Albemarle High School teens. One was released from juvenile detention after police conceded they didn’t have enough evidence against him and dropped charges. The other was Robert Davis. Then 18, he was arrested at gunpoint by Albemarle County police and brought in for questioning at around 1am February 22.

Video released to C-VILLE and posted by the newspaper to YouTube shows what happened next. Police questioned Davis for six hours. Held in leg shackles and given little respite, Davis sounds first bewildered and then desperate on the interrogation tape, pleading repeatedly for a chance to talk to his mother as investigators push him to tell them the truth, so that he can be spared “the ultimate punishment.”

After more than five hours and dozens of claims of innocence, he starts giving police what they want. Bit by bit, he confesses to the crime, including the stabbing of Nola Charles; he stabbed her “one or two times,” he says. Moments before the video feed cuts out, the detective who has faced him off and on all morning asks him a final question.

“Is what you said tonight, this morning, to me—is that a true and accurate statement about your involvement, about who was there?” he asks.

“Yes,” Davis says, almost inaudibly. And then, after a pause, “because it’s too late for me to say no.”

He was right. Davis eventually entered an Alford plea: He pleaded guilty, conceding there was enough evidence to convict him, but maintained his innocence.

In 2006, Rocky Fugett asked for a meeting with Rosenfield, the attorney said, and said Davis wasn’t there the night of the double murder. He later told reporters the same thing. Jessica Fugett initially stuck to her story, Rosenfield said, but she later told him she wanted to clear her conscience, and admitted she lied about Davis’ involvement. Both have signed sworn affidavits saying Davis is innocent, he said.

“You have two killers, neither of them having any reason to lie, having signed under oath saying they framed Robert,” said Rosenfield. But Davis’ guilty plea meant a new trial or a sentence modification were off the table. A pardon was his only chance.

“And then you still have to overcome the confession,” Rosenfield said.

When innocents confess

A confession is a powerful piece of evidence, explained UVA law professor and false confession expert Brandon Garrett, and it’s often the only one police have to work with in a murder case.

“Assuming you don’t have DNA evidence or somebody caught in the act, some of the most important crimes crucially rely on whether this person is going to come clean,” he said. Sometimes investigators can’t resist asking leading questions. “It’s very tempting, if they’re not getting the answer they want, to encourage the answer.”

But there’s a growing understanding in the criminal justice world of the dangers of leading questions during an overzealous interrogation, he said: Certain people are vulnerable to confessing to crimes they didn’t commit.

Robert Davis is just such a person, said Dr. Jeffrey Aaron, a forensic and clinical psychologist at UVA who specializes in evaluating confessions, and the director of the Commonwealth Center for Children & Adolescents.

People have a hard time understanding the why and how of false confessions, Aaron said, but there’s a solid explanation.

“It seems crazy until you understand the process, and then it makes perfect sense. It’s completely consistent with known psychological processes,” he said. “There’s a core element of human psychology that involves choosing the best outcome available, and if it’s a bad but not worse outcome, you choose the bad outcome.”

Aaron testified in an Albemarle County Circuit Court hearing in 2003 that there were a number of errors with Davis’ interrogation by police, and when the Fugetts recanted, he signed a new affidavit reaffirming his takeaways. Davis had mental health problems and was immature, Aaron said, and combined with the way he was questioned—police indicated they had physical evidence against him when they had none, hinted that he could get the death penalty and told him he’d see his mom if he confessed, all of which was perfectly legal—he believes a false confession could have resulted.

Perhaps most importantly, said Aaron, the interrogation shows a clear pattern of Davis first denying allegations, seeking guidance on what to say and then feeding information provided to him back in the form of statements suggesting guilt. That, he said, is exactly how detailed false confessions come about.

The Albemarle County Police Department was unable to make detectives available for an interview about interrogation techniques by press time, but has committed to discussing policy for a follow-up story.

Aaron’s affidavit asserting Davis’ susceptibility to providing a false confession joins the sworn statements from the Fugetts in the clemency plea that is now, for the first time, getting a full investigation by the state. But Garrett pointed out that detailed confessions have staying power, even when there’s overwhelming evidence to contradict them.

“We have governors who fail to understand that a detailed confession could be wrong,” he said. Doug Wilder offered only life in prison to Earl Washington Jr., who confessed to raping and murdering a teenage mother in Culpeper in 1982, and Tim Kaine refused to grant a full pardon to the Norfolk Four, sailors who confessed to a brutal 1997 rape and murder; in both clemency petitions, there was exculpatory DNA evidence.

Davis and Rosenfield hope their case is strong enough to sway another governor.

“I’m deeply impressed with the McAuliffe administration taking the issue of justice surrounding the Davis case so seriously, and I’m happy at their commitment to seek out the truth,” Rosenfield said.

Mike Signer grew up in Arlington, but Charlottesville tugged on him from an early age. The 42-year-old Fifeville resident and father of two spent summers here as an elementary school student in the ’70s, taking enrichment courses at UVA.

“I remember vividly falling in love with the city back then,” he said in an interview with C-VILLE a few days before he formally announced his campaign for City Council February 11 with a launch event at the Downtown Transit Center that was well-attended by local Democrats.

Charlottesville became his home while he attended UVA’s School of Law, and he put down roots not long after, buying his Fifeville home while working as a legal advisor to Senator Mark Warner in 2005. He launched an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor in 2009, but since then, his focus has been closer to home. He’s got a law practice and a family here—he and his wife Emily have 4-month-old twin boys—and he’s spent the last few years digging into local politics and civic life. He ran the Democrats’ 2013 City Council campaign, serves as the president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, chairs the board of the Charlottesville Emergency Food Bank and sits on the West Main Steering Committee and a police advisory committee that includes City Manager Maurice Jones and former federal prosecutor Timothy Heaphy.

A run for local office felt like a natural next step, he said.

“Charlottesville has this extraordinary diversity of communities,” said Signer. “I’d like to build bridges between as many of those communities as we can. And I want to bring professional, responsible leadership to the Council.”

As a lawyer and the chair of a nonprofit board, he said he thinks about fiduciary responsibility a lot. “It means you have an actual duty to think about the interests and the body as a whole,” he said, and right now, “I think that special or parochial interests take up a lot of the Council’s agenda.”

Signer’s campaign will focus on economic development, improving quality of life—including public education and public spaces—and public safety, and he plans to hold community conversation meetings on all three.

That last plank has absorbed a good deal of his attention recently, he said, thanks to conversations that have grown out of meetings of the advisory committee.

“We should be leading the country in restoring trust between citizens and the police, but we also need to make sure that the city is as safe as we can make it,” he said. He wants to see a greater emphasis on community policing, including a requirement that officers spend a block of time each month or quarter introducing themselves to people on their beats.

Signer also said he learned from the recent controversy over the renewal of the West Main ABC store’s lease. This winter, he championed a petition opposing the store’s continued presence, citing complaints about crime and littering, but the effort saw a backlash after other neighborhood residents claimed the issue was about gentrification.

Despite the flap, Signer said he thinks the issue ended in a win for everybody: The lease was renewed, and the ABC agreed to an increased security presence, among other “compromises,” he said.

“Almost every issue in public life has two sides,” said Signer. “I know that the way I’d want to be on City Council is listening to and hearing all sides.”

For the next few weeks, C-VILLE will sit down with the candidates who have announced their plans to run for Charlottesville City Council in November.

Republican Delegate Steve Landes has announced his plan to run for an 11th term. Landes represents Virginia’s 25th House district, which includes part of Albemarle County as well as localities in the Shenandoah Valley.

“It has been an honor and privilege to serve the citizens of the 25th District in the House of Delegates for these past 19 years,” Landes said in a press release. “Together we have accomplished a great deal in those years, but we still have more work to be able to continue to strengthen our economy, to build on the foundation of our schools, colleges and universities, and to continue the work of preserving our heritage, traditions and culture for future generations.”

Landes was first elected in 1995, and serves as the chairman of the House Education Committee and vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

He faces a challenge from Democrat Angela Lynn, a former FEMA employee and teacher who has lived in Albemarle County for 13 years. Lynn, whose home is in White Hall, announced her plan to run last week.