Damian Stinnie – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: 5th District frenzy, license lawsuit lives, copycat charged and more

Garrett’s abrupt change of heart

Congressman Tom Garrett has many critics in the Charlottesville area who call him “One-term Tom,” but even they didn’t foresee that happening by Garrett withdrawing from the 5th District race.

Word that Garrett may not seek re-election first was reported by Politico May 23 after he and his chief of staff parted ways. The next day, Garrett held a Facebook Live news conference and insisted he was still in the race, although UVA Center for Politics pundit Larry Sabato described the event as “strange,” the Daily Progress reports.

On May 24, four former staffers told Politico that Garrett and his wife, Flanna, forced them to run personal errands, including picking up groceries and dog poop.

By May 28, a teary Garrett appeared in Richmond at Capitol Square, where he’d served a term in the General Assembly, and said, “Any person—Republican, Democrat or independent—who has known me for any period of time and has any integrity knows two things: I am a good man and I’m an alcoholic,” according to the Washington Post.

The withdrawal could leave the Republican Party of Virginia with a flood of candidates vying to face Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn. Distillery owner Denver Riggleman, who ran for governor last year, says he’s seeking the nomination, as are Delegate Michael Webert, a Fauquier resident, Martha Boneta, a Fauquier farmer, and Jim McKelvey, a Bedford developer who sought the 5th District seat twice before. Delegate Rob Bell is one of the names floated, but he says he’s not going to run.

“That’s why it’s a no-drugs, no-thugs scene here.”—Adharsh McCabe, the former Boylan Heights general manager, in a May 25 Daily Progress article on his policy to bar all but UVA students after 11 pm. Boylan Heights then released a statement that McCabe’s policy was never approved, and fired him.

Cops not liable

A federal judge threw out local resident Robert Sanchez Turner’s lawsuit against the city, the state and city and state police officers, for failing to uphold the 14th Amendment on August 12 by “interven[ing] and protect[ing] a citizen from criminal conduct by third parties.” Judge Norman Moon said there is no clearly established constitutional right to support any of the Unite the Right counterprotester’s claims.

Lawsuit stays alive

The Legal Aid Justice Center filed a federal class-action lawsuit in 2016 on behalf of Charlottesville resident Damian Stinnie, 24, who was unable to pay about $1,000 in traffic fines, and lost his driver’s license. It’s the legal group’s position that Virginia’s suspension of licenses for nonpayment of court fees is an “unconstitutional scheme.” A district court dismissed the suit last year, but on May 23, an appeals court overruled the dismissal.

Federal charges

Michael Anthony Townes, the Atlanta man who posted threatening messages online against Charlottesville schools and caused all city schools to go into lockdown for two days last October, has been arrested and is facing federal charges. He claimed he would “pull off a copycat” of the mass shooting in Las Vegas at an “all-white charter school” in Charlottesville.

Integration leader

Civic activist Helen “Sandy” Snook, who was one of the first to integrate a children’s camp and Girl Scout troop in Central Virginia in the 1960s and who was active in the League of Women Voters and many civic organizations, died May 22 at age 90.

Merger alert

WVPT PBS and WHTJ PBS have merged, and according to “Charlottesville Inside-Out” co-producer and host Terri Allard, this means new PBS programming and PBS Kids summer learning opportunities.

Suicide

Andrew Dodson, 34, an alt-righter from South Carolina who attended the August 12 Unite the Right rally, killed himself in March. As the news circulated on the web last week, white supremacist leader Richard Spencer attributed Dodson’s suicide to being doxxed, and called doxxing an “act of war,” according to anti-fascist blog It’s Going Down.

The SMART way to handle a gun

Need a cable gun lock? Drop by the Albemarle County Police Department during normal business hours to snag a free one. To use it, put the firearm’s safety on, pass the cable through the barrel, into the chamber and through the magazine. Then lock it with the padlock.

On the heels of two 2-year-old children who were accidentally shot to death in Virginia on the same day last week—one by his 4-year-old brother in Louisa and the other in Roanoke, when a toddler found a loaded gun in his parents’ apartment—one area group is working to make the country safer for children.

“I am always perplexed by the accidental part,” says Priya Mahadevan, the head of the local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Responsible gun owners do not leave a loaded weapon within reach of their babies. Now a 4-year-old toddler has been saddled with the fate of having killed his sibling.”

On May 23, the group of determined moms and allies held a Wear Orange bingo fundraiser at Random Row Brewery, where dozens of people showed up dressed in the favorite color of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl who was shot and killed in Chicago in 2013. The Wear Orange campaign has been embraced by activist groups across the nation.

Over the past 20 years, tens of thousands of people have suffered gun-related deaths, according to Mahadevan.

Says the mother who was born in India, “I have three beautiful children, but they have grown up in this awful, fearful, trigger-happy nation and I feel so bad that I cannot give them the simplicity of the life I had in a country where I had never seen a gun. They were very much present there as well, but it was never a threat to safety of civilians.”

Mahadevan’s group offers a list of tips to help gun owners be “SMART” when it comes to their firearms. “We have so many other things to worry about already, this should not be one of them,” she says.

Secure guns in homes and vehicles

Model responsible behavior

Ask about unsecured guns in other homes

Recognize the risks of teen suicide

Tell your peers to be SMART

Correction June 4: The date of Tom Garrett’s announcement that he would not seek reelection‚May 28—was wrong in the original version.

‘Constitutional crisis:’ Judge hears DMV’s motion to dismiss

Not in attendance at a civil case hearing February 2 in U.S. District Court were the four plaintiffs who are suing Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles. One reason for their absences, according to their attorney, is because their driver’s licenses are suspended.

The case, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center against DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb, contends that Virginia’s suspension of licenses for nonpayment of fines and court costs, including for convictions that have nothing to do with driving, is unconstitutional because it doesn’t take into account the driver’s ability to pay, gives no notice of the suspension, and it denies due process and equal protection to the poor.

The DMV, represented by Assistant Attorney General Margaret O’Shea, offered a list of reasons why the case should be thrown out: That Holcomb has sovereign immunity. That the state statute offered the option of community service. That the suit was filed in the wrong court, and that people receive notice by the “mere existence of the statute” and are told at the time of their conviction their license will be suspended if they don’t pay fines within 30 days.

“We’re talking driver’s licenses—not someone being locked up,” said O’Shea.

She suggested that the court should give the state of Virginia time to remedy the problem, and said the lack of indigent payment plans has “all been fixed” by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Rule 1:24 last November, which went into effect February 1.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Jonathan Blank with McGuire Woods wasn’t buying it. He noted that 914,000 Virginia license holders—one out of six state drivers—had their licenses suspended with no hearing.

UVA law professor Leslie Kendrick, another plaintiff’s attorney, called the suspensions of nearly a million licenses “a constitutional crisis.” A driver’s license is a constitutional right and being poor is not a good reason for taking it away, she argued. “Crimes didn’t lead” to the suspensions, she said. “Debt is the cause.”

Angela Ciolfi with Legal Aid Justice Center doesn’t think Rule 1:24 is a panacea to the problem. It would not help people who never had payment plans like plaintiff Damian Stinnie, a Charlottesville resident who owes four courts a total of $1,500.

To get his license reinstated, he could be required to pay 20 percent to each court, a total of $300, and that doesn’t include the DMV reinstatement fees, which could bring the total to $475, an impossible sum for someone who’s indigent, said Ciolfi.

And if he misses a single payment to a single court, his license could be suspended again, she said.

Counting on General Assembly consideration to fix the law, she said, “is still a hope and a prayer,” with the 1,000 bills it typically has to consider.

Ciolfi asked Judge Norman Moon to declare the state law unconstitutional and to enjoin the state from suspending licenses until the matter is remedied.

Moon sounded like he’d rather do anything else, and he asked the plaintiffs’ attorneys if there wasn’t a way to handle this “without going to a low-level federal court.”

O’Shea sounded the same theme. “I understand the appeal of a splashy federal court ruling,” she said. “This is not the right vehicle for their claim.”

However, there’s already been some weighing in on the federal level. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs in November, and called Virginia’s process unconstitutional.

Blank asked the court to deny the motion to dismiss and give the plaintiffs the opportunity to argue the case. “I haven’t been in a case with this many people with this much at stake,” he said.

Added Kendrick, “If everything the defendant says is true, we wouldn’t have 914,000 Virginians with their licenses suspended.”

Fact check

Lawyers representing the commonwealth say people who can’t afford to pay traffic fines already have the option of getting a payment plan or community service. C-VILLE checked with the local general district courts.

In Charlottesville, Clerk Mary Trimble said both were available “if somebody comes in and asks.” She also said a down payment is required for a payment plan.

A clerk in Albemarle General District Court, after checking with Judge William Barkley, referred a reporter to the court’s page on the Virginia Judicial website.

“Payments must be received within 30 days following your court date to prevent the suspension of your operator’s/driver’s license for failure to pay,” it says, followed by the cryptic, “Payments made in accordance with ‘time to pay’ or deferred payment agreements are due on the agreed upon date.”

The page does not mention community service.