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By now, the photographs of flak-jacketed police officers mingling in the yellow-cordoned parking lot of a strip-mall has become a familiar image in the daily newspapers. The leftover scenes from recent sniper attacks convey the desperation that comes with trying to comprehend madness.

Faced with irrational, wanton brutality, it’s natural for people to seek cause-and-effect explanations, says William Stejskal, director of psychology at UVA’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. Any simple explanation of the human mind, however, is probably wrong, he says.

"You see it all the time, the talking heads who want to sum up the one or two or three reasons why this guy did this," Stejskal says. "It’s absurd."

As an expert in forensic psychology whose recent high-profile testimony was requested in connection with 9/11, Stejskal is often hired by lawyers to evaluate the "legal sanity" of defendants, or testify to the mental competence of the accused to stand trial. Calling a person "insane" may conveniently explain irrational behavior, but the label is often misapplied, he says.

"People think `insane’ means tearing through the world at 200 miles an hour with your hair on fire. But that’s not the case," says Stejskal. "There’s a tendency to oversimplify these concepts in a gross way."

Mental illness, Stejskal says, is marked by delusions – an incorrect belief firmly held despite evidence to the contrary. Severe delusions compounded by frightening, all-too-real hallucinations can cause people to react, sometimes outside the law, Stejskal says.

"People who are legally insane didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t know it was wrong, or they had an irresistible impulse," says Stejskal. "It means the court says they did it, but they can’t be held legally accountable."

Of course, defendants may act crazy to avoid extended jail time. "Like anybody, they can distort and pretend," says Stejskal. "You take everything they tell you with a good measure of compassionate skepticism."

Stejskal spends most of his time digging for background evidence that can support or discredit a defendant’s insanity plea. Friends, family or police records can provide a more well-rounded picture of a person’s mental state, he says.

This summer, Stejskal dug into the highest-profile case of his career. He and fellow expert Xavier Amador of Columbia University were hired to judge the competency of Zacharias Moussaoui – the alleged "20th hijacker" facing capital charges in Alexandria – to defend himself in court. The two met with Moussaoui’s mother and reviewed his French academic records and data from French social services.

Stejskal won’t discuss the specifics of the case, but according to an article by Seymour Hersh in the September 30 issue of The New Yorker, the records showed Moussaoui has a family history of domestic violence and mental illness. Hersh’s article quotes unnamed CIA and FBI sources describing Moussaoui as a "wanna-be" who turned to radical Islam for a source of identity late in life, but whose volatile and unstable nature made him unfit for real operations.

Dr. Raymond Patterson, a court-appointed psychiatrist, testified that Moussaoui should be allowed to defend himself in his trial. After their research, Stejskal and Amador argued Patterson’s conclusions were unfounded and Moussaoui needed more evaluation. On June 13, however, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled – without hearing any testimony – that Moussaoui met the legal standard for competency.

"The trick is to be neutral and ignore the pressures attorneys put on you to see things their way," says Stejskal.

"The legal system," he says, "simply wants to know whether a person is `guilty’ or `not guilty.’ But it’s very rare that it’s a black-and-white issue when it comes to human behavior.

Wherever waters gather, be it bay or brook, monitors will soon don their hip boots to mark the 30^th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Charlottesville resident John Murphy hasn’t yet picked his site, but knows he’ll be somewhere in a "riffle" – the bubbly part of a stream – counting bugs.

Between October 18 and 24, Murphy, an environmental writer and certified volunteer water monitor, will be sampling in the Rivanna watershed as part of a nationwide survey. Virginia’s non-profit Save our Streams and other conservation groups here are also poised to count the catch. When the splash of festivities is over, the resulting "snapshot" of our nation’s waters will be posted on the Year of Clean Water website, www.yearofcleanwater.org.

By and large, the celebration will be catered by the grassroots – volunteers like Murphy who will pitch tables set with utensils such as ice cube trays, magnifiers and tweezers. The untrained will use kits to measure parameters like temperature and pH, or the Secchi disk, a lake science tool that’s been kicking around since 1866, while trained participants are more likely to dip nets and count aquatic bugs. Sensitive to pollutants, their numbers indicate water condition.

Murphy says volunteers are crucial to the quest for clean water. "Public resource management agencies are underfunded," he says. "They can’t possibly do the job." An interest in stream ecology led the 45-year old to train for certification five months ago. In Virginia, some 300 certified monitors draw attention to challenged streams by providing data to the Department of Environmental Quality.

While 40 percent of Virginia’s stream miles are impaired, the damage is concentrated in the heavily urbanized, Northern region. The Rivanna watershed remains relatively healthy. "We’ve got a good thing here," says Murphy, "but we’re concerned about the trend." Accordingto the DEQ, this region’s impaired stream miles doubled between 1998 and 2002.

Since the birth of the Clean Water Act in 1972, says Murphy, "The nation has pursued cleanup of point-source pollution, particularly through wastewater treatment." Today the task is aimed at a more insidious ill: non-point source pollution, that is, a glut of nameless pollutants of anonymous origin. Such damage accounts for most of the state’s impaired waters. Whatever its sources, one response to pollution, suggests Murphy, is the local implementation of buffer zones, or forested strips abutting streams to protect against human impact. The Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District, which facilitates buffer zone installation, is supportive of citizen monitoring, he says. "Monitoring data can help them with site selection, and can also help confirm the effectiveness of the buffer."

Next on Murphy’s calendar is the formation of a new, sustained citizen monitoring program. The effort will involve local conservation and resource agencies, and began with the 1997-1998 Rivanna Roundtable, coordinated by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. A monitoring project was initiated then, but soon encountered funding difficulties.

While the Clean Water Act anniversary is a cause to celebrate, the widespread activities might suggest that every stream has its guardian. The truth is, the ratio of monitors to streams leaves most waters unsupervised. Scientists estimate that 75 percent of Virginia’s surface water is of "unknown quality."

Like most volunteers, John Murphy enjoys conducting the outdoor surveys, which he says require "about 6-8 hours a year." Waiting for the picture of a stream’s health to develop, an entire ecosystem comes into focus; its plants and animals, slopes and depths, the rocks and casings housing bug-life.

It’s worth it, Murphy knows, to keep "a good thing" going. The goal: no stone unturned, no organism uncounted, no stream left behind.

Goodbye Bypass? Not just yet

The Western Bypass may be dead, for now, but the unbuilt road still casts a long shadow over local transportation politics.

Last spring, the nearly insolvent Virginia Depart-ment of Transportation cut the $180 million Route 29 Bypass from its six-year plan. Politicians from southern communities like Lynchburg and Danville continue to lobby for the road, however, saying Charlottesville is a traffic bottleneck that makes their cities less attractive to industry.

Early this month, Virginia Senator Stephen Newman, a Republican from the 23rd District, wrote to Governor Mark Warner "expressing great concern over reports that the Charlottesville Bypass might be in danger of being delayed or – even worse – eliminated altogether from current transportation plans."

Newman is miffed because the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization is trying to cut the Bypass from its transportation plan. "In our opinion," Newman wrote, "the MPO’s apparent position against the Bypass is not in the best interests of broader transportation planning. …It is for this reason that we ask you to direct the Secretary of Transportation and the Commonwealth Transportation Board to look very closely at every single item in the Charlottesville MPO’s Transportation Improvement Plan, conducting an in-depth review of each item. We realize that by asking you to undertake this review, it could greatly delay many of the MPO’s other projects, including the funding for all those other projects."

In fact, the local MPO – whose membership includes elected officials from the City and County, as well as VDOT planners – is itself divided over the Bypass. Albemarle’s representatives, Supervisors Sally Thomas and Dennis Rooker, want it cut from the plans. The City’s position – represented on the MPO by Councilors Kevin Lynch and Meredith Richards – is more ambiguous.

Richards, who is running for Virginia’s 5th District Congressional seat, would very much like to attach her name to the final defeat of the widely unpopular Bypass; but her fellow Councilors want it to remain in the MPO’s plan.

On Monday, October 7, Council asked the MPO to delay its vote on whether to axe the Bypass. Richards, fuming, complained that Council was giving in to the implied threats in Newman’s letter. "Let’s be honest here…" she began.

Mayor Maurice Cox drew applause from the assembly when he cut Richards off. "We’ve got a long agenda, and people are here for the water ordinance," said Cox, who scheduled the water debate for the end of the meeting.

"I was simply trying to address that Council should not allow itself to be coerced into not upholding our obligations to the community," Richards said later.

Councilors say they don’t feel "threatened" by Newman – in the samebreath, though, they say Charlottesville ought not alienate other cities by appearing to be inflexible or unilateral in its transportation policies. "We’re responsible locally, but we’re part of a larger game," says Councilor Blake Caravati.

The unbuilt Bypass seems to have the most realpolitik leverage, however, as Charlottesville and Albemarle try to solve shared transportation problems. The City wants to begin work on a Southern Connector and an East-North Connector, roads which Councilors say are crucial to solving City traffic congestion. Since those two roads would be County projects, it seems Council won’t vote to kill the Bypass until Albemarle commits to building alternative roads.

"It seems foolhardy to remove one road from a regional plan without knowing what you’re going to replace it with," says Cox.

While contemplating the formation of a new educational center that would foster spiritual well being, cultural understanding and religious teaching, Heena Reiter was reminded, she says, of a song by the 17th century teacher Reb Nachman of Bratslov. "All the world is a narrow bridge," goes the rough translation, "the most important thing is not to be afraid." With that inspiration was born Gesher, a self-described resource for the Jewish and wider community of Charlottesville. In Hebrew, "gesher" means bridge.

Now entering its third year, Gesher is home not only to Jewish meditation classes and daylong retreats aimed at spiritual renewal, it also hosts a monthly interfaith pray-for-peace gathering the first Thursday evening of every month at its University Circle digs. Deliberative and thoughtful, Reiter, who is a music teacher, former psychiatric nurse, Jewish lay leader, onetime Buddhist and mother of three, embodies the heart of Gesher. This semester, Gesher’s faculty numbers seven.

From Reb Nachman’s sage insight, Reiter says, she has learned that "although a bridge can mean connecting one’s life to one’s spirit or community or to people of different faiths, ‘bridge’ has a more fundamental meaning: Life is precarious and the most important thing is not to be afraid and to trust." Reiter calls trust-building a continuous process of "being awake to the present moment" and the divine within it.

Reiter’s holistic outlook spurred her participation beginning in 1999 in a "Compassionate Listening" program in Israel. Aimed at giving full attention to the experiences and feelings of both Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians as they live with unimaginable conflict, the listening tour had a huge impact on Reiter. "I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the tremendous suffering people are feeling," she says. "It’s a human problem as well as a political problem."

After her experiences in Israel, Reiter realized that even in the United States, "we can help people in the Middle East even if we can’t affect politics." She recommends learning about peace-building organizations; becoming informed about the conflict from diverse and multiple sources; for Jews, learning about and healing what has been a historically distressed Jewish spirit; and learning about one’s own biases.

This last bit is the toughest, Reiter says. "Looking seriously at what we carry around is not for the faint of heart," she says.

Reiter knows this firsthand. Listening to Palestinians and Israelis, some of whom she found to be "frightening" in their views, was hard. "It really hurt to open my mind," she recalls.

Reiter is optimistic, however, about the positive results that can come from such arduous self-reflection. "The advantage is once you suffer through it, " she says, "there is an incredible compassion that flows through your self for others."

If all this emphasis on mindfulness and moment-to-moment honesty sounds New Age, it is. And it isn’t. Reiter points out that the concept of singular oneness is central to Judaism, the world’s oldest monotheistic faith. Ancient Jewish teachings address the oneness of God’s name and all creation, and more modern Jewish intellectuals returned to the discussion in the 19th century. In the 1960s, she says, the practice of incorporating meditation into Jewish ritual came into vogue. In the past decade, it’s been "taking off."

Gesher is one of four similar teaching centers across the country, further evidence of the developing trend.

The purpose, says Reiter, is "to bring the inner life into more direct contact with everyday life."

Straying from the usual despairing discussion of water, the subject of Wednesday’s October 2 meeting among the Board of County Supervisors brought to light an entirely different kind of drought–the State budget.

Piedmont Virginia Community College prides itself on making higher education accessible to everyone, but while its enrollment keeps rising (June 30 marked the highest in history–7,000), its funding keeps decreasing. And with the dark cloud of budgetary cuts forecasting a 7 percent, 11 percent or 15 percent decrease in spending for 2002-2004, PVCC finds little humor in the irony that, instead of adding new programs to feed new demand, it will be discussing instead what can and cannot be eliminated.

Anticipating that State boards will also announce another tuition increase, PVCC may find it hard to fulfill its promise of "higher education accessibility." "These budget cuts could be a serious blow," says Supervisor Dennis Rooker, "especially considering all that PVCC provides to area residents."

Of the 7,000 students currently enrolled in courses for credit, one-quarter are Albemarle County residents, hence the discussion among County Supervisors. PVCC already struggles to fit its enrolled students into night course programs; 500 students now attend PVCC classes at Albemarle High School and 90 are driving themselves to Monticello High. The worry over night class enrollment isn’t the only thing causing President Frank Friedman to lose sleep; PVCC has more than 400 high school students earning college credit with PVCC’s dual enrollment program. It also boasts 600 students enrolled in classes provided over the Internet and 125 enrolled via video conferencing classes.

"We are using technology to make it happen," says Friedman, "giving students valuable information they might not get otherwise."

Two of PVCC’s major funding requests will support a new fire-suppression system in the 30-year-old main building and a new science and technology building, which will include science labs, more classrooms and new programs–especially in the growing healthcare arena. The college wants $5 million for that project. It also hopes to raise a scholarship fund and ramp up guidance services.

"We have far too many students just wandering through our program," says Friedman, "and we need some solid advisors to direct these students."

Even with the State budgetary shortfall clocking in at $2 billion, PVCC figures that if its neighbors at UVA can put $128 million into building a new basketball arena, certainly the community college could round up a measly $5 million.

Within the next 24 months, Friedman and his board will be gearing up to launch a massive fundraising campaign. Knowing PVCC doesn’t have nearly the alumni support and spirit UVA might, Friedman retains his positive outlook. "In the future, we would love to go as far as bringing the Monticello Visitors Center back into PVCC," he says.

But for now, Friedman’s primary goals focus on the future of his students, and his community.

"We cannot turn any of these students away," says Friedman, "be it night courses, dual enrollment, video conferencing classes. Our entire purpose is to bring people of all ages from all areas into higher education, not turn them away."

Better than most, Virginia Consort conductor Judith Gary understands that sometimes words aren’t enough. Wednesday, September 11 was one of those times.

Gary leads the Virginia Consort, a 35-member chamber chorus she helped to found in 1990. As a memorial to those lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she conducted the Consort in a performance of Mozart’s “Requiem,” one of more than 200 worldwide performances of the piece on September 11. The Consort was joined by local musicians as well as some from Richmond, Staunton and Waynesboro. With an accompanying orchestra for the performance, there were 185 musicians gathered in total, she estimates. The 90-minute event was brought together with only one rehearsal.

“It was a total community effort,” Gary says. “It was very meaningful.”

Held at the First Presbyterian Church on Park Street, the concert drew an audience of more than 1,000.

And while the performance of the “Requiem” was a memorial, and billed as a commemorative performance, Gary says it was not one-dimensional.

“There was another side,” she says. “It’s recognizing and celebrating the fact that we are capable of extraordinary beauty. Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ is an example of this. You hear it, and you are moved by it. The piece itself has the depth required for the event, it’s big enough to contain it. Sadness. Heroism. It’s much bigger than any words.”

Of someone able to conduct such a large group, it is surprising to learn that Gary did not study music from childhood. She acknowledges that she began studying music later than most who become professionals and had to “make up lost time.” A student of music theory and composition at  Boston University, Gary fell in love with choral music.

She came to Charlottesville 25 years ago to earn her master’s degree in music history from UVA while her husband studied law at the University. As Gary became increasingly interested in the musical possibilities here, she put her plans for more advanced degrees aside. “There’s a lot to do here,” she says.

In 1990 a group of singers Gary had previously conducted approached her about starting a choral group. She agreed and became the founding conductor of the Virginia Consort, which is entering its 12th season and has grown “far more” than Gary ever anticipated. The Consort now also has three youth choruses: high school, treble and a training chorus.

Among the benefits of being a conductor, she says, is the ability to choose the music that the Consort performs. Always experimenting, Gary is not content to simply re-work the old masters. She looks to add variety to the repertoire, and includes arrangements of folk songs and contemporary pieces. “I enjoy studying the pieces, getting to know them, seeing what makes them tick,” she says. “I have a lot of fun watching the music come alive in rehearsal and performing.”

Next on Gary’s docket is planning for the upcoming holiday season. The Consort expands to 50 members for its annual Christmas performances, and rehearsals begin in a few weeks. Concerts at UVA’s Cabell Hall will follow soon after, starting the first weekend in March. Her schedule is packed.

It seems Judith Gary has more than made up for her “lost time.”

 

"I  think we’re in a crisis,” City Manager Gary O’Connell deadpanned to City Council at its meeting on Monday, September 16. It was an uncharacteristically drastic statement for the understated O’Connell, reflecting the panic in City Hall as Charlottesville rapidly dries up.

Last week City Council approved a series of harsh water restrictions [See Extra!, page 11], motivated by sobering data. “We have between 80 and 100 days of water left,” public works director Judith Mueller told Council. “There’s no significant rain predicted in the long-term forecast.”

The local water supply, as measured by reservoir levels, is dropping by about 0.6 percent per day, down to about 55 percent last week. City Councilors spent the September 16 meeting avidly seeking ways to force residents to conserve water. They considered a series of restrictions that make repeated water violations a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by a $2,500 fine and up to one year in jail. At the public hearing that opened the meeting, some residents claimed the proposed ordinance wasn’t harsh enough.

“By the time these regulations take effect, it will be too late,” said John Wheeler. “We will have suffering and economic disaster. We need to have a rolling shut-off of residential water starting now.”

Council agreed, and during the meeting they added even more teeth to the proposed restrictions. They eventually passed an ordinance that, effective September 17, closed all commercial car washes, prohibited the watering of athletic fields, limited laundry at hotels, banned showering in health clubs without low-flow shower heads and ordered all water leaks be repaired within three days of notification.

Car wash business owners called the forced closings unfair. “A full-service car wash is very close to a sit-down restaurant in water use,” said Henry Weinschenk, who owns Express Car Wash on Route 29N. He and other car wash owners said the 15 car washes in the City and County account for only one-third of 1 percent of total water consumption.

Nevertheless, the Councilors’ reluctance to interfere with local business was trumped by the fact that Charlottesville may run out of fresh water as soon as December. Mueller told Council its main focus should be preserving water for fire protection and basic human health. She acknowledged that some of the City’s new conservation measures were “symbolic,” but such steps were necessary to convince people that the water shortage is a serious threat.

“The health and safety of our community is at stake,” said Councilor Blake Caravati. “Washing my car is not my priority.”

“It’s my livelihood,” retorted a car wash owner from the gallery.

Council’s new restrictions order all businesses to document water-saving techniques that will cut their usage by 20 percent, and Mueller said the City has sample plans to help businesses—especially restaurants—to conform.

Still, the most difficult challenge facing City leaders is to convince residents to curb their personal water use, which accounts for about 80 percent of all water used in the urban area, according to water officials.

“Despite all the restrictions, there have been days when our consumption has actually gone up,” lamented Caravati.

The $10 million principle of the thing

After tears, jeers and more tears, WVIR is ordered to pay up for its cracked reporting

“Thirty-some years of my ambition to make something out of my life has been destroyed,” Sheckler wrote in court documents prior to the trial. “I have suffered so much mental anguish over this I don’t know how I stay alive.” On Friday, May 23, a City Circuit Court jury vindicated his anguish and gave him a reason to live—more precisely, a $10 million award in compensatory damages.

A Federal grand jury indicted Sheckler in March 2001 on one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine, although he was later acquitted. Novice reporter Melinda Semadeni of WVIR covered the indictment and falsely claimed, “DEA and JADE forces had confiscated 50 grams of crack cocaine and 500 grams of powder cocaine in a March 2001 raid on the home and business of Jesse Sheckler.” This single, erroneous sentence formed the crux of the multi-million dollar suit.

Sheckler alleges that WVIR’s report laid financial waste to his eponymous garage and used car business in Stanardsville and, according to his psychiatrist, left him with post-traumatic stress disorder. WVIR counters that broadcasts of Sheckler’s drug indictment, regardless of factual errors, would have had the same effect on his reputation and livelihood and, further, that a link between their broadcasts and the plaintiff’s ailments cannot be proven. News of the fabricated raid and drug confiscation aired on April 6 and 7, and again on October 29 and 30, 2001. No retraction has been issued, nor is one likely, since News Director Dave Cupp testified of one vague recollection in his 23 years at WVIR of issuing an on-air retraction.

The testimony of VCU mass communications professor Ted J. Smith opened Murray’s case, and in it, Smith stated that the most “bone-chilling” call a newsroom can receive, short of contact from the FCC, is a lawyer’s call regarding the facts in a story. Sheckler’s criminal attorney in 2001, Denise Lunsford, would testify that she contacted WVIR about their errors, although they never seriously addressed them. Murray made Smith’s claim his refrain, repeating—and savoring—the word “bone-chilling” almost hourly.

Murray pushed his next witnesses toward discrediting Semadeni. Her own video deposition rendered a barrage of equivocations, such as “I don’t recall” or “I really don’t recall” or “I believe so.” The hedging abruptly stopped when she was asked where she obtained the drug bust information. She remembered distinctly, it seems, her lack of fault. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Pagel, she said. So the passing of the buck began.

Here’s a brief outline of the buck’s progress (don’t forget your trail of bread crumbs): Attorney Lunsford complained to Semadeni via telephone on April 7. When asked, Semadeni said Pagel was her source, but she referred Lunsford to Greene County reporter Nordia Higgins. Lunsford spoke to Higgins on April 9, but Higgins referred her back to Semadeni. Higgins and Semadeni exchanged e-mails. A WVIR employee passed a vague version of the complaint to News Director Cupp, who then told Station Manager Harold Wright. Then, nothing from either side until March 2002.

Enter Attorney Benjamin Dick. Dick testified in a later deliberation, which the jury did not hear, that he called Wright in March 2002 representing Sheckler. Dick’s inquiry into retraction elicited Wright’s purported response, “We’re not interested in a retraction. Go ahead and sue. We’ve got the best lawyer money can buy, and we stand by our story.” Presumably, although he would not comment, Attorney Albro is seeking the best writ of appeal money can buy.

When Sheckler, a big man with rough hands and a pencil moustache, took the stand next, Murray asked him how he felt when he saw WVIR’s report. Sheckler paused, bowed his head and, sobbing, replied, “I fell to the floor.” News Director Dave Cupp appeared moved, reporters Nordia Higgins and Semadeni listened with a flat, almost smug, affect and reporter Pedro Echevarria appeared to be nodding off. The plaintiff wept profusely all three days.

“What did people say to you?” Murray asked.

“It’s gotta be true. It’s on TV,” Sheckler replied, and a later string of Greene County witnesses seemed to confirm his assertion.

Sheckler’s wife and two daughters also testified through more tears.

“I don’t go out at night,” his wife Becky said, crying, “because I don’t wanna see people looking at me.”

 

Albro’s defense began with DEA agent Stan Burroughs, a man built like a linebacker. Burroughs arrested not only Sheckler, but also Sam Rose, to whom Sheckler loaned the $37,000 that brought his indictment. Convicted in October 2001, Rose drove lavish vehicles and made promises of lavish paybacks and—surprise!—dealt at least one kilo of cocaine per month. Burroughs said that Sheckler denied any financial relationship with Rose when confronted, telling him that anyone who made that claim “was a liar.”

Murray cross-examined Burroughs and, gathering his papers to finish, asked him, “Sometimes you get the wrong man, don’t you?”

“No,” Burroughs replied.

Leaning forward, Murray said, “You still think he’s guilty, don’t you?”

“Guilty as sin,” he said.

Albro objected, the judge sought order and Sheckler’s family gasped in disbelief.

To defend WVIR, Albro trumpeted erroneous reports regarding Sheckler’s indictment printed in both the Greene County Record, a newspaper with a circulation of 5,000, and the Daily Progress, papers whose representatives claimed to have acquired their inaccurate information from Pagel as well. Neither print report contained the fabricated drug bust.

“Rumor was spreading like wildfire” about Sheckler’s drug involvements, Record reporter Allen Browning testified.

In a coup de grace, Albro called Progress reporter Keri Schwab, who covered Sheckler’s indictment on April 11, 2001. Earlier, the grave and hard-hitting Pagel, who drafted Sheckler’s indictment, testified for the plaintiff that WVIR’s Semadeni visited his office and sobbed. Semadeni swore she had never seen Pagel until his testimony. Schwab admitted that it was she who had visited the Assistant US Attorney’s office and broke down in tears. The confusion and mistaken identity seems to speak to a low official regard for the press: one reporter’s the same as another.

Albro argued that Sheckler had an established history for his gastrointestinal problems, anxiety and depression, and that his arrest and criminal trial caused most of the harm. His witness, Dr. Bruce Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist, cited a litany of doctor’s reports filled with diagnoses and treatments of the very ailments Sheckler said WVIR caused, but which inconveniently predated the broadcasts and seemed to be linked to the anxiety of his criminal trial.

Asked by Albro for his professional opinion of the broadcasts’ direct harm to Sheckler, Cohen said with finality, “It is my opinion that you can’t come to an opinion.”

Poison dropped into the edge of a pool will eventually kill all life in the pool,” Murray said in his closing argument, drawing a metaphor to the continuing effects of defamation that goes uncorrected.

“You wanna talk about stress?” asked Albro in his closing, in a nod to Cohen’s testimony. “Would you want Stan Burroughs and Bruce Pagel after you?” If a retraction would have solved everything, he told the jury, then Sheckler should have asked for one, but since he didn’t, he deserved no compensation.

The jury disagreed.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Murray told C-VILLE in a post-verdict interview. “This man was terribly damaged by what WVIR had broadcast…. Maybe $10 million is too low,” he mused. “There is no price that can be placed on a man’s reputation.”

To win compensatory damages, a plaintiff must prove negligence, defined as deviating from a common standard of practice, according to defamation expert Tom Spahn, a partner in the firm McGuireWoods.

“It’s not uncommon for plaintiffs to win against media defendants,” Spahn told C-VILLE. “It’s very difficult to retain those on appeal. Nearly all of them are overturned. The appellate courts are more inclined in a First Amendment case to look at what happened, and most well-publicized verdicts are reversed and thrown out.”

“The money was not the issue,” Sheckler told C-VILLE. “It was the issue, but not for me personally….”

Sheckler interprets his trial as a sort of crusade.

“It’s gonna get in their pocketbook and sting the hell out of them,” he said of the $10 million award. “If we destroy that…we haven’t done our job…[and] I didn’t do what God put me here to do.”

And if the jury had not found in his favor?

“It would have completely destroyed my life,” Sheckler said over the phone between tears. “And I think I would have gone. I don’t think I would have stayed here. Even though the case is over with, I still have all kinds of dreams, nightmares, can’t sleep….”

Publishers, take note: This is not the last that will be heard from the suddenly lugubrious Sheckler.

“I’m gonna be writing a book about it. They definitely destroyed my life. It’s a mess,” he said. “You see, I’ve got to live with that for the rest of my life. At least I’ve got a chance to live now, whereas before, I don’t think I did.” —Aaron Carico

 

 

Double the fun

Local filmmaker seeks twins to shoot  

“The idea just occurred to me—what if these Siamese twins that were separated found that they missed each other, and could they find someone to surgically reattach them?” asks local artist and filmmaker Russell Richards. “That’s basically what the story is about, it’s about conjoined twins who are severed, and who later try to get themselves reattached because they decided they liked things better the way they were before.”

That’s the premise of Richards’ new short film, tentatively titled Separation Anxiety, and the 33-year-old is anxiously scouring the streets of Charlottesville for twins, or even people who look a lot alike, to star.

If it seems a slightly bizarre, slightly comic, slightly unsettling sort of topic, that’s intentional. Richards says his films feature “a grotesquely over-the-top sort of humor.” This sensibility is on abundant display in his previous work, fetish (the film was shown at the Vinegar Hill Film Festival), a nifty little black-and-white number that treats the human foot with about as much care as it can be treated, with a twist.

He works fast—Richards anticipates wrapping his newest project up in a couple of days, after the cast is assembled. “I just need a day to shoot interiors and a day to shoot exteriors, and a couple of fittings because I need to design some costumes for the conjoined twins scenes,” he says.

The final version will be about five minutes long or shorter, the latest in a series of what Richards calls “short, perfectly wrought little films.”

Richards, who has a studio at McGuffey Art Center and supports himself as a printmaker and sculptor, is looking to make filmmaking his “principal career.” He cites directors such as David Cronenburg, Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam as influences, “filmmakers who have kind of an imaginative flair or make a personal statement.”

Apparently, he already has something in common with many of the greats he admires: a dash of hubris.

“I’ve decided recently that filmmaking is just a real talent of mine,” he says. “I think I’m really good at it, and I think that it might provide me with a more certain future than art.”

After severing and reattaching twins, what’s next?

“I do have a feature film script that I’m working on now, called Lust of the Monster. It’s about a Creature from the Black Lagoon type of monster who goes to Hollywood and becomes a movie star.”—Paul Henderson

 

 

Resale for sale

In the world of gently used, twice is no longer nice

Pamela Juers has tried everything to attract customers to her children’s resale consignment shop. Every morning she drags a few select items—strollers, clothes racks, wooden toys—outside to attract visitors, only to roll them back inside by evening. She’s even taken a massive yellow “Kids Resale” sign and hung it upside down along the sidewalk in front of her store. But with the exception of a passer-by who regularly comes in to notify her, “Your sign’s upside down, you know,” nothing seems to be working.

When Juers opened My Silly Goose exactly two years ago at the Seminole Commons shopping center near Forest Lakes, business was booming. Each month sales grew by more than 10 percent, and on busy days Juers would see upwards of 30 customers. Last November, however, her business dropped off by more than 50 percent.

“Maybe the newness wore off, I don’t know,” says Juers. “But after November, business just stopped, and never, ever recovered.”

Juers isn’t the only one to feel the pain of the faltering consignment world lately. In April, the Junior League’s Opportunity Shop announced it would be closing its doors by the end of that month. And Evelyn Davison, co-owner of the children’s resale and consignment store Heaven to 7 on Zan Road says that although her location has been open only one year, she’s already feeling the pinch.

“I have terrific days, I have good days,” says Davison, “and then I have days I only get by.”

Although Davison and Juers think the problem is partly rooted in a local mentality to buy upscale, shiny and new, not everyone agrees. Tamar Pozzi, proprietor of Glad Rags on Commonwealth Avenue, says she’s had her best year in recent history, partly due to shoppers wanting to spend less in a slowing economy, and partly because she refuses to carry hard-to-move products such as children’s wear.

“When I started out, I was selling kids clothes and I gave up within one year,” says Pozzi. She then turned her focus to women’s clothes and jewelry. “Children’s resale is a very hard row to hoe—you have to sell a whole lot, for only a little money,” she says.

Still, some blame the recent failings of area consignment shops on the mindset of the general public that resale shopping is more hobby than necessity.

“The first time we really felt the pinch was around this past Christmastime,” says Marie Donella, who’s been running Nelly’s Place consignments on the Downtown Mall for a decade. “The department stores were offering such huge sales. It affected consignment.” Donella, by the way, also closed shop—perhaps temporarily—last month. She is uncertain if she’ll reopen after summer.

For Juers, she knows that if business at My Silly Goose doesn’t pick up soon, she will be forced, like others, to close her doors.

“I think if people just knew that I was so close to closing that they would come in,” she says.

Glad Rags’ Pozzi believes things might be turning around, based on her store’s performance. But Juers, who plans to hang onto her children’s resale boutique until her lease expires next year, isn’t quite as optimistic.

“Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘Geez, I wonder what ever happened to that store?’”—Kathryn E. Goodson