Tag: Jason Kessler

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Tracci’s motion: Asks judge to vacate Kessler dismissal

After his perjury charge was dismissed, Jason Kessler accused Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci of trying to do a “political hit job.” Eze Amos

Two weeks ago a judge dismissed a perjury charge against whites-righter Jason Kessler because the prosecution didn’t establish that the alleged crime took place in Albemarle. Legal pundits decried the misstep as a rookie move.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci filed a motion to vacate that decision April 3, claiming that Judge Cheryl Higgins erred twice in her decision to dismiss, and now local legal pundits are again abuzz about whether the unusual move has a chance to bring Kessler back to trial, despite the specter of double jeopardy.

The perjury charge stems from Kessler swearing to a magistrate that Jay Taylor assaulted him on the Downtown Mall in January 2017 as Kessler collected signatures for a petition to remove then vice-mayor Wes Bellamy from office. Taylor was charged, but the Charlottesville prosecutor said she dismissed the complaint because video did not support Kessler’s allegation that he was assaulted.

Kessler was convicted of slugging Taylor, a misdemeanor, on April 6, 2017, and given a 30-day suspended sentence.

Tracci had rested his case against Kessler March 20 when defense attorney Mike Hallahan moved to strike the charge because Tracci did not establish that the alleged crime took place in Albemarle County, where the magistrate’s office is located.

Higgins took the motion under advisement and the defense continued with its case. Before it could go to the jury, Higgins dismissed the charge.

“Venue is not an element of the offense,” says legal expert Dave Heilberg. It’s a procedural determination and the judge could have taken judicial notice that it’s common knowledge the magistrate’s office is in the county at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail on Avon Street.

“It was a dismissal on other than the merits,” says Heilberg. “If the decision had been made on the merits, the commonwealth can’t appeal.”

“This case is atypical because it involves an erroneous ruling on venue, a matter unrelated to Kessler’s guilt or innocence, that the commonwealth must address as its prosecution progresses,” says the motion.

Tracci argues in the motion that venue was established by the defense, and the court must consider the entire proceedings, not just the prosecution’s case.

He points to a Supreme Court of Virginia ruling that dismissal on venue does not constitute double jeopardy and the commonwealth can prosecute Kessler on a substitute indictment.

According to Heilberg, it will all come down to the definition of “pre-trial.” According to state statute, in a felony case a pre-trial appeal may be made. “Is it still pre-trial if you didn’t take it to the jury?” he asks.

A judge dismissing a case because of venue is rare, and in his 39 years of practicing law, Heilberg can count easily the number of times he’s seen it: “never.” He says it must happen because otherwise, “there wouldn’t be these appellate cases in Virginia if it hadn’t.”

As for the odds Higgins will vacate her own ruling and concede she made a mistake, says Heilberg, “She’s very careful.”

He says, “Like lawyers, judges are not perfect. Venue is tricky and doesn’t come up that often.”

Neither Kessler nor his attorney, Hallahan, returned phone calls seeking their response to the latest turn of events.

Tracci has asked Higgins to make a decision by April 10.

And in other Kessler litigation news, Taylor filed a civil complaint against Kessler April 3, according to court records.

 

 

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Judge takes parking under advisement in August 12 case

Jacob Goodwin, one of four men charged in the beating of DeAndre Harris August 12, was found guilty of malicious wounding. Charlottesville police

An attorney for an Arkansas man who can be seen kicking DeAndre Harris in the face in videos of the August 12 Market Street Parking Garage brawl at the summer’s Unite the Right rally is now asking for a change of venue for his client’s upcoming trial.

Elmer Woodard—the lawyer from Blairs who represents Jacob Goodwin, as well as “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell and KKK leader Richard Preston—says Goodwin can’t get a fair trial in Charlottesville.

For one, because jurors are likely to park in the closest garage, which also happens to be the scene of the crime.

And if a judge bars them from parking there, their second choice could lead them to Charlottesville Circuit Court up Heather Heyer Way—the street recently renamed in honor of the 32-year-old woman who was killed on the day of Goodwin’s alleged offense.

“I think that’s a huge problem in seating a jury,” Woodard told the judge. Jurors are not legally allowed to visit a crime scene outside of the court’s control, he added.

But a parking problem isn’t the only reason he said his client can’t be tried here.

Woodard noted that media coverage of Goodwin often mentions Heyer’s death, “inflating” that the man who came to court in a gray and white-striped jail jumpsuit, with a brown beard and long, braided ponytail, was involved. Charlottesville residents aren’t able to be impartial about whether he should be found guilty of malicious wounding, said the attorney.

There’s also the potential for “sleeper activists,” he said—a phrase that Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s attorney, Mike Hallahan, said in a motion to change the venue of Kessler’s perjury trial. These people, the lawyers say, would intentionally try to be seated on the jury to convict unfavorable defendants.

Woodard said he no longer pays attention to what’s reported in local media about his clients.

“I had to stop reading [it] because my eyes crossed,” he said.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony agreed with Woodard that jurors parking in the garage on Market Street could be problematic, but said the defense’s argument that seating a jury would be difficult is irrelevant.

“It’s not whether seating the jury will be difficult, it’s whether the court can seat an impartial jury,” she said. During the voir dire portion of the trial, Woodard will have the opportunity to examine and interview potential jurors, and motion to strike individuals he deems unfit from the jury pool.

Judge Rick Moore agreed that he could seat an impartial jury, but took the motion under advisement to consider the parking dilemma. He also denied a defense motion to exclude evidence.

The evidence in question was a surveillance video of the attack, which plays at 15 frames per second, while all other known videos that will be admitted during the trial are 30 frames per second.

Woodard opened his argument on that motion in an unusual way. In his initial statement, he only actually voiced every other word to the judge, or half the sentence.

He said a video that plays at 15 frames per second shows only half of what happened and would be misleading to a jury, as it was misleading to the judge when he spoke every other word of a sentence.

“You didn’t mislead me,” said Moore. “I just didn’t know what you were saying.”

Goodwin’s two-day jury trial is scheduled to begin April 30.

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Kessler subpoenaed C-VILLE reporter

Two business days before Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler was scheduled to stand trial on a felony perjury charge March 20 in Albemarle Circuit Court, C-VILLE Weekly reporter Samantha Baars was in Charlottesville General District Court, where a deputy handed her a subpoena to appear as a witness for Kessler.

Aside from First Amendment freedom-of-the-press issues, the subpoena posed another problem for the paper’s two-person news team: If Baars were sequestered as a witness, C-VILLE would have no one available to cover a case with considerable local interest.

Local attorneys James West and Josh Wheeler volunteered to challenge the subpoena and, with the support of the Rutherford Institute, prepared a motion to quash, which West filed just hours before the trial was scheduled to begin.

West says a federal court has identified reasons subpoenaing journalists is a bad idea, including the potential threat of judicial and administrative interference with news gathering. “If reporters are regularly subjected to open-ended subpoenas, they would be thinking of that in their reporting,” he says. “It would appear to turn reporters into an investigative arm of government or private parties.”

And as in C-VILLE’s case, it places a major burden on the limited resources of a small organization, says West. “You could be intentionally harassed. If a reporter has done a long series of articles that were not particularly flattering, [the subject] could subpoena the reporter so she couldn’t cover the trial.”

Kessler attorney Mike Hallahan told Baars, who had no first-hand knowledge of Kessler’s sworn statement to a magistrate that he was assaulted, which was the basis of the perjury charge, he was subpoenaing her for an October 10 article in which she’d interviewed Jay Taylor, the man Kessler claimed assaulted him.

In court, Hallahan objected to the motion to quash and initially to saying why he wanted Baars as a witness. “He wanted her as an impeachment witness for Taylor,” says West. C-VILLE was unable to reach Hallahan.

Judge Cheryl Higgins granted C-VILLE’s motion. “She was proactive in recognizing journalistic privilege,” says West.

Reporters in Charlottesville are not often subpoenaed to testify in court, but it’s happened before. A special prosecutor called NBC29’s Henry Graff as a witness in February for a case against Jeff Winder for assaulting Kessler August 13.

In 2007, Charlottesville prosecutor Claude Worrell, now a juvenile court judge, subpoenaed former C-VILLE editor Courteney Stuart, then a reporter for the Hook, to testify in a public drunkenness case.

Stuart appeared before Judge William Barkley with a motion to quash. “I cover crime,” she told the judge. “This is drunk in public—a minor crime. This week I’m also covering a capital murder. Am I to be called to testify in every crime I cover?”

Barkley denied the motion. At trial, Rutherford attorneys represented Stuart, but the defendants agreed to stipulate her story was accurate and released her as a witness. At that time, Worrell said he would subpoena reporters in the future because their role in a free press “does not mean they can opt out of their responsibility as citizens to provide information.”

Such a move “makes reporters an investigative tool of the court or government,” says Rutherford president  John Whitehead. “Not a good idea.” It also compromises journalistic integrity, particularly in instances in which a reporter has promised confidentiality to a source, he says.

“A subpoena can be used to intimidate reporters and lower their profile,” says Whitehead. “It threatens freedom of the press.”

Correction: Kessler claimed Taylor grabbed his arm and got in his face, but not that Taylor slugged him as originally reported.

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‘Unfortunate outcome:’ Kessler perjury charge tossed

After his perjury charge was dismissed, Jason Kessler accused Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci of trying to do a “political hit job.” Eze Amos

 

Jason Kessler didn’t waste any time addressing the media outside the courthouse March 20 when a judge abruptly dismissed a perjury charge against him during the trial.

“[Robert] Tracci is trying to do a political hit job,” he said to the cameras and microphones, adding that he and other attendees of August 12 rally he organized, including “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell, have been targeted by the Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney. “This was an attempt to undermine my credibility so I can’t testify about the city of Charlottesville and their sabotage of that rally that got people hurt. And no one on any side should have gotten hurt.”

Kessler was accused of lying under oath at the local magistrate’s office following a January 2017 altercation with another man on the Downtown Mall. Defense attorney Mike Hallahan made a motion to strike the charge against his client immediately after resting his case, arguing that the prosecutor did not prove that the alleged crime took place in Albemarle County, and that the burden to establish venue is on the commonwealth.

Tracci, who could be heard asking his legal team if they had “any ideas” just minutes before the discharge, made a brief statement outside the courthouse that he was “obviously disappointed,” and said in an email that his office is examining potential steps to take.

“We count on our commonwealth’s attorney to do the best job he can and sometimes it’s not enough,” said local attorney Timothy Read, who was observing the trial. He said the perjury charge can’t be brought against Kessler again because of double jeopardy. “I’m very surprised that it happened here in a case with this much attention. …I think it’s an unfortunate outcome.”

Local legal expert Dave Heilberg says that while all trial attorneys make blunders, the rookie mistake won’t bode well for Tracci in the next election.

“Head prosecutors who are mostly office administrators before showing up to grandstand for their big cases sometimes make these errors,” he says. “Voters don’t forget these unforgivable mistakes.”

The perjury charge stemmed from a Downtown Mall scuffle when Kessler asked passersby to sign a petition to remove then Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy from office for offensive tweets he made before being elected. Community members saw it as a racial attack when the right-wing blogger put his hit out on the only African-American city councilor, and Kessler testified that many people would curse him over their shoulder when he asked for their signature on his document.

But when Jay Taylor approached and took the petition from Kessler, reading it for a few moments and calling Kessler a “fucking asshole,” the man on trial for perjury said he perceived a threat.

Video evidence submitted in court showed Kessler slugging Taylor upside the head, but Kessler’s sworn statement to the magistrate at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail was that Taylor had assaulted him first, by “violently shaking” his arm when he took the petition from Kessler and making “face to face” contact.

In the defense’s opening argument, Hallahan, who wore a long, pink tie, portrayed the result of Taylor’s alleged assaultive behavior by making a swing with his right arm and exclaiming, “BAM!”

Hallahan persisted that Kessler acted in self defense, and that his client’s written account of what happened, made under oath to a magistrate, was true. On the witness stand, Kessler admitted that “shaking,” wasn’t the best word to use and that the “face to face” contact he referred to consisted of Taylor standing about a foot away. In April, Kessler pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault of Taylor.

Jason Kessler addresses the media after flipping off a C-VILLE reporter and pleading guilty to assaulting Jay Taylor in April 2017. Staff photo

Tracci showed a Newsplex clip of Kessler being interviewed on the day of that guilty plea, in which he said, “Man to man, yell in a man’s face and expect to get punched in the face.”

During the perjury trial, Taylor testified he was walking on the mall with his dog and a cup of coffee when he saw Kessler, with whom he was acquainted, and asked to read the petition, even though he wasn’t a city voter.

Taylor said he realized that the petition wasn’t supposed to make anything better, that it was all about creating chaos, and that’s when he handed it back and called Kessler the expletive. After Taylor got clobbered, he said Kessler apologized, asked him not to call the cops and said he was just having a “bad day.”

“Yeah, I was having a bad day, clearly,” Kessler testified. “I try to be [a nice guy], [but] I don’t always succeed.”

It took nearly three hours to seat a jury of 10 men and three women out of a pool of 60 potential jurors, because more than a dozen told the judge that they were familiar with the organizer of the Unite the Right rally and Hallahan elected to individually interview them.

“I will admit that I have a preconceived idea about whether he committed perjury,” said one unnamed juror during her interview. “I believe he lied.”

She was dismissed. Another woman who was relieved of her duties said she knew Kessler as the guy who wanted to remove the city’s Confederate war memorials of General Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

“She might be the only person in Albemarle County who thinks Mr. Kessler wants to take the statue down,” said Hallahan after she left the room, and there was a brief moment of unity, where the defendant’s supporters and opponents shared one thing: a nervous giggle.

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This week in brief: Snuffing out tiki torches, ‘really dank bud’ and too cute puppies

Close up of a burning tiki torch on a blurred colored background.

Candles in, tiki torches out

Just ahead of Jason Kessler’s March 6 lawsuit against the city complaining that City Manager Maurice Jones unconstitutionally denied his permit for a two-day August 12 anniversary rally—Jones also denied five other applicants’ permit requests for the weekend—City Council updated its event permit regulations February 20.

  • 45-day notice if street closure requested, 30 days if not
  • Prohibited: Open flames, except for hand-held candles for ceremonial events
  • Prohibited (partial list): Pellet guns, air rifles, nunchucks, tasers, heavy gauge metal chains, poles, bricks, rocks, metal beverage or food cans or containers, glass bottles, axes, skateboards, swords, knives, metal pipes, pepper or bear spray, mace, bats, sticks, clubs, drones and explosives
  • Prohibited: Dressing like cops, military or emergency personnel
  • Small group exception: Up to 50 citizens may spontaneously demonstrate without a permit

Highlights from Kessler’s complaint:

  • The city couldn’t guarantee a clear path to enter Emancipation Park for his fellow Lee statue-loving protesters.
  • The permit denial is based on crowd size, but there’s plenty of room in the one-acre park, which could hold as many as 20,000 people “cheek to jowl.”
  • Because of the city’s “misconduct,” fewer people will attend and a “reduced crowd will dilute” Kessler’s message.
  • The city’s denial was based on Kessler’s viewpoint and violates his First and 14th Amendment rights.

 

Quote of the Week: “You’re more likely to be killed by @timkaine running mate @HillaryClinton than you are by an AR-15.” —A March 8 tweet by failed gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, who stopped by Charlottesville March 10 during his campaign for Senate.

 

How much is that puppy in the browsing window?

Attorney General Mark Herring says his consumer protection team continues to receive complaints from people “who thought they were buying an incredibly cute puppy from an online breeder, only to find out it was a scam and the dog didn’t exist.” Red flags for this scam include stock photos, exotic or designer breeds for cheap, and poorly made websites that include misspellings and grammatical errors, he says.

Life and then some

Cathy Rothgeb

A jury recommended a 184-year sentence for Cathy S. Rothgeb, the former Orange County youth softball coach found guilty on March 12 on 30 of 34 charges, which include forcible sodomy, aggravated sexual battery and object sexual penetration of two former athletes. The alleged molestations began in the ’90s, when one victim testified that she was 9 years old.

Assault and battery

A Western Albemarle High School teacher has been placed on administrative leave after he was arrested for a physical altercation with a student on February 16. Oluwole Adesina, a 53-year-old Crozet resident, faces up to a year in jail or a $2,500 fine for the misdemeanor assault and battery charge.

Green acres

Hogwaller Farm, a nine-acre development with 30 apartments and an urban farm, has been proposed near Moores Creek along Nassau Street, according to the Daily Progress, which reported March 11 that developer Justin Shimp submitted a zoning amendment pre-application last summer to ask Albemarle officials to change the light-industrial designation to rural so he could plant seven acres of “really dank bud.”

New hire

Roger Johnson. Courtesy of Albemarle County

Albemarle County announced its hiring of economic development director Roger Johnson from Greenville, North Carolina on March 7, for a job that’s been open for over a year. The last person to hold it lasted for 19 months.

Guilty plea

Joshua Lamar Carter, 27, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on March 12 for firing a gun at city police officers in 2016. In a plea agreement, he entered an Alford plea to one charge of attempted second-degree murder and pleaded guilty to shooting a gun in a public place and illegally possessing a firearm as a felon.

A headline we’re starting to get used to: Another August 12 lawsuit

Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic filed a federal defamation lawsuit March 13 on behalf of a Unite the Right rally counterprotester who claims to be a victim of fake news conspiracies.

Brennan Gilmore’s cell phone footage of the deadly car attack on Fourth Street went viral on August 12, and “Gilmore was contacted by media outlets to discuss his experience and soon became the target of elaborate online conspiracies that placed him at the center of a ‘deep-state’ plot to stage the attack and destabilize the Trump administration,” says a press release from the law group.

Now he’s suing defendants Alex Jones, Infowars, former Congressman Allen West and others for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and “mobilizing an army of followers to pursue a campaign of harassment and threats against him.” The lawsuit seeks punitive damages and compensation for Gilmore’s alleged reputational injuries and emotional distress.

“From Sandy Hook to Pizzagate to Charlottesville, Las Vegas and now Parkland, the defendants thrive by inciting devastating real-world consequences with the propaganda and lies they publish as news,” says Gilmore. “Today, I’m asking a court to hold them responsible for the personal and professional damage their lies have caused me, and, more importantly, to deter them from repeating this dangerous pattern of defamation and intimidation.”

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Keeping out the militia: Law group says legal remedies exist to prevent another August 12

Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection says all states have the power to prevent militia-like activity. Photo by Eze Amos

New research shows that all 50 states can legally restrict private militia and paramilitary activity at events such as the summer’s deadly Unite the Right rally, according to the University of Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

The legal organization, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of the city last October against 25 groups and individuals that allegedly engaged in unlawful militia-like activity on August 12, claims the independent militiamen and women, many with AR-15s slung over their shoulders, made tensions boil at the rally.

In its litigation, ICAP aims to prohibit the defendants from returning to Virginia to engage in the type of behavior seen over the summer, and during a February 8 press conference, senior litigator Mary McCord announced a set of new tools every state can use.

“Violent conduct is not protected by the First Amendment,” she said.

Aside from independent groups such as the Pennsylvania and New York light foot militias present at Unite the Right, McCord says several of the white supremacist groups also fall into that category because of their “militaristic battle behavior,” combat-type helmets and reliance on bats, batons, clubs, sticks and reinforced flag poles for protection.

But perhaps this could have been prevented due to already existing clauses, statutes and prohibitions, which could be used proactively to impose restrictions during an event’s permitting process to reduce the possibility of violence while protecting the right to free speech and peaceable assembly.

“All in all, what this research found is that all 50 states have one of these,” McCord said.

On October 28, the League of the South —a white nationalist group named in ICAP’s lawsuit—planned two White Lives Matter rallies in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Adam Tucker, an assistant city attorney for Murfreesboro, said the folks at ICAP immediately reached out with suggestions for restrictions the locality could impose to prohibit violent paramilitary activity like that seen in Charlottesville.

Tucker said city officials were able to write a prohibition of paramilitary activity into the rally’s permit, and on the day of the planned rallies, though members of the league showed up at their first planned rally in Shelbyville, they canceled the second one, calling it a “lawsuit trap” on Twitter.

Legal remedies

Paramilitary activity prohibitions: 25 states (including Virginia, where it’s a Class 5 felony) criminalize assem-
bling a group to train or practice with firearms or techniques that could hurt or kill someone, and intending to use those practices in a civil disorder.

False assumption statutes: 12 states (including Virginia) bar acting like a cop or the unauthorized wearing of military-like uniforms.

—University of Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection

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Four more down: Kessler-related hearings reach a verdict

When Jason Kessler leaves a courtroom, he's often greeted the same way. Staff photo

When Jason Kessler leaves a courthouse in Charlottesville, he’s usually greeted the same way, and that’s by an angry mob.

A group of dozens of anti-racists followed him in a large circle around Market Street until he receded to the police department next to the general district court. He exited only when a maroon truck showed up to pick him up.

All the while, African-American counterprotesters, who reminded him that February is Black History Month, shouted a slogan that’s quite familiar to him. One that he’s even used once or twice—“You will not replace us! You will not replace us! You will not replace us!”

Kessler was in court February 2 for five different hearings in which he claimed to be the victim.

Throughout the morning, known anti-racist activist Veronica Fitzhugh, Phoebe Stevens, Jeff Winder, Brandon Collins and Kenneth Robert Litzenberger were defended as they stood in front of the judge and across from the organizer of the summer’s deadly Unite the Right rally.

Fitzhugh was first, and while Judge Robert Downer dismissed an assault charge that stemmed from an apparent May 20 altercation with Kessler on the Downtown Mall, she was found guilty of disorderly conduct for being a member of the mob that surrounded the white nationalist and his friends that night. In video evidence, Fitzhugh, wearing a pink wig, can be seen shouting “Nazi, go home,” in close proximity to Kessler’s earlobe.

“You have to take this kind of abuse with a grain of salt,” Kessler said when defense attorney Jeff Fogel asked why he was smiling during the video.

Special prosecutor Michael Caudill, who was appointed to the case, said “Kessler exhibited decorum.”

Downer said Fitzhugh’s actions met the objective standard of disorderly conduct and found the woman—who wore a hot pink dress with the work “antifa” scrawled across the back—guilty. She was fined $250, with $200 suspended.

Outside the courthouse, her attorney said, “All she was doing was telling him the truth—that he was a Nazi.”

After her hearing, four people appeared whom Kessler has accused of assaulting him at his August 13 press conference in front of City Hall, where he was unable to be heard over the angry crowd that eventually swarmed him and tackled him to the ground.

Stevens was the tackler, but says that wasn’t her intention.

“We love you, Jason,” were her last words before she took him to the ground, according to her own testimony and that of a freelance photographer at the event.

Stevens, a French teacher in the public school system who also teaches rock climbing and yoga, says she practices peaceful intervention. On August 12, she could be found using her body to shield counterprotesters being beaten on the ground and white supremacists alike. And on August 13, she was hoping to do the same for Kessler.

“I remember thinking he looked kind of like a rabbit darting back and forth,” she said. “It was as if he was about to get hit by a train. It was getting worse and worse.”

So she said she embraced him, not intending to knock him down.

“If only he could understand that as an individual, he is loved—it’s this thing that he stands for that is not,” she said.

Regardless of the prosecutor calling her a “nice lady” and the judge saying he didn’t doubt a minute of her testimony, she was found guilty and sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

Winder, a longtime activist who was protesting the war in Iraq with Code Pink when he was arrested for trespassing in 2007 in then congressman Virgil Goode’s office, was also among the mix charged for assaulting the organizer of the Unite the Right rally on August 13.

NBC29 reporter Henry Graff testified that he saw someone who appeared to be Winder strike Kessler when reviewing footage of the press conference gone awry.

While defense attorney James Abrenio argued that Winder couldn’t be identified beyond a reasonable doubt, Downer disagreed and sentenced him to 30 days in jail, with all of them suspended on the condition that he has good behavior for a year.

Brandon Collins, a City Council frequenter who works for Public Housing Association of Residents, entered an Alford plea, meaning he didn’t admit guilt, but recognized that there was enough evidence to convict him of assaulting Kessler. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail with all of them suspended.

And lastly, Kenneth Robert Litzenberger, who allegedly spat on Kessler during the scuffle, had his case continued until next February.

The white nationalist wasn’t given a chance to address the media after the hearing, as anti-racists wedged themselves between him and members of the press.

They shouted, “No platform for Nazis!”

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In brief: Thin Mint mania, cheap(er) hotels, glorious victory and more

Girl Scout Troop 352 leader Diana Filipi set up shop at Kroger at Rio Hill on January 28 with Brownie scouts Ophelia Filipi, Kaitlyn Hicks, Keri Smith and Lylah Burtner. Staff photo

It’s Girl Scout cookie season

Good luck getting around town without encountering a wide-eyed girl at a cookie booth who wants to sell you one box of each flavor. How could you say no?

For the past two weekends, girls have set up shop at dozens of locations around town. To get the scoop on this year’s cookie sale, we went straight to the source.

“I love selling cookies because it makes me feel really happy,” says Keri Smith, a Burnley Moran second-grader in Brownie Troop 352. “And the best part is maybe at the end, we get to eat them.”

Keri’s friend and fellow second-grader Lylah Burtner says, “My favorite part is when I meet new people, because I always make friends when I sell the cookies.”

Troops make a 65-cent profit from each box they sell. “I’m hoping I can get a big, big, big mansion and then I’ll get a fuzzy couch,” says Lylah.

It’s Lylah’s first cookie sale, and she’s quickly reminded that girls don’t get to keep their profits. Keri says she hopes their troop raises enough money to go to Virginia Beach this summer.

“I just really, really, really want to go to the beach,” she says.

Janet Driscoll Miller, the membership facilitator for the local service unit, says cookie sales help fund all of the activities and support that the Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline Council provides. For every box of cookies purchased, 74 percent goes directly back to Girl Scouts.

“Even more important than the funds, however, are the opportunities to learn business and marketing skills,” she says. “I was a Girl Scout as a girl, and as an adult, I started my own business and run a marketing agency.”

The top-selling cookie in Charlottesville and Albemarle? “As is true probably everywhere, our area loves Thin Mints,” says Driscoll Miller. Local girls sold more than 30,000 boxes of them last year.

And if you need to get your fix, there’s an app for that. Sales end March 31, so download the Cookie Finder app today to search for a cookie booth near you.

By the numbers:

  • 70,980 boxes of cookies sold in Charlottesville/Albemarle in 2017
  • 30 percent were Thin Mints
  • 21 percent were Caramel deLites
  • 750 Girl Scouts in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area
  • $4 for one box of cookies
  • $0.65 troop profit per box

Quote of the Week: “We were born for this and built for this. This is what we worked for.”—UVA’s Kyle Guy after beating Duke 65-63 January 27 at Cameron Stadium in Durham for the first time since 1995

 

Storm Team loss

NBC29’s longtime weather guy Norm Sprouse exited the newscast January 23 after 27 years on the air. He’ll continue part-time behind the scene as he eases into retirement.

It’s baaack

Delegate Steve Landes again is carrying a bill that would affect the revenue-sharing agreement loved by Charlottesville and loathed by Albemarle. In exchange for ceasing annexation in 1982, the county has since paid the city $311 million, even after the state halted annexation in 1987. The bill allows localities in such agreements for more than 10 years to renegotiate and calls for reviews after five years in future economic growth-sharing deals.

Another arrest in August 12 beating

This time, police have taken into custody Tyler Watkins Davis, a 49-year-old man from Middleburg, Florida, who they say maliciously wounded DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Parking Garage beatdown.

 

 

 

Downward trend

It costs 44 percent less to book a room at the Albemarle Estate at Trump Winery than it did a year ago when President Donald Trump was inaugurated, according to the Washington Post, which reported January 24 that nine of his most expensive properties have experienced significant price drops.

“Demonized?”

Jason Kessler’s March perjury trial will take place in Albemarle, despite his one-inch thick motion to change the venue because, he says, dozens of news stories make it impossible to get a fair trial. His lawyer, Mike Hallahan, argued “sleeper activists” could slip onto the jury, but Judge Cheryl Higgins said January 30 the publicity wasn’t enough to change the location of the trial, and she’s taking the motion under advisement.

Shoo flu, don’t bother me

We’ve all heard that the flu is particularly nasty this year, but the local area hasn’t been hit as hard as others.

According to the Virginia Department of Health, there’s widespread flu activity in the state’s Northwest region where our Thomas Jefferson Health District is located, but in the second week of the year—the most recent available data—only 4 percent of emergency room and urgent care visits were for flu-like illnesses.

The UVA Health System saw 150 probable flu cases between January 8 and 21, says spokesperson Eric Swensen.

“At this point, we’re characterizing the flu season as an early and moderately heavy flu season, but not outside our recent experience with the flu,” he says.

And according to Charlottesville High School nurse Ann Sandridge, a minimal number of kids in city schools have come down with the illness.

“There are no red flags right now,” she says.

 

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Kessler perjury trial will remain in Albemarle

Jason Kessler stops for a moment to blame local media for prejudicing the jury pool with its coverage of him. Staff photo

Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler was in Albemarle Circuit Court today with a one-inch-thick motion to move his March 20 perjury trial out of this area, claiming the dozens of news stories included in the motion “demonized” him and made it impossible to get a fair trial here.

His attorney, Mike Hallahan, argued that a January 4 Daily Progress article “basically calls Jason Kessler a liar.” The story about the motion recounted Kessler’s sworn statement to a magistrate that Jay Taylor had punched him on the Downtown Mall as he collected signatures last winter to remove Wes Bellamy from City Council.

The charge against Taylor was dismissed with prejudice after Charlottesville Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony said video disproved Kessler’s claim. The sworn statement Kessler made is the basis for the perjury charge. He pleaded guilty to slugging Taylor.

“The bias continues and continues,” said Hallahan.

However, Judge Cheryl Higgins said the article appeared accurate, and when it said Kessler had been “demonized,” it was quoting from the motion. “I don’t find this inflammatory,” she said.

The motion also said the Unite the Right rally drew “many undesirables from the far right,” called former police chief Al Thomas “a mere puppet of City Council,” and blamed police for the death of Heather Heyer by a “white supremacist.”

Kessler went on to criticize Heyer in the motion: “Charlottesville City Council named a street after her even though she was engaged in unlawful assembly, blocking a roadway and jaywalking, while the Charlottesville City Council ignored the two Virginia State Troopers that died within the same hour.”

Hallahan continued to insist “the media coverage is over the top.” And he saw a further threat: “sleeper activists” slipping on to the jury “because they hate [Kessler] so much.”

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci pointed out that the Progress article Hallahan put into evidence is factually accurate. 

“The court would be hard pressed to find any jurisdiction in the commonwealth not aware of the events of August 11 and August 12,” said Tracci,

Hallahan disagreed about the significance of August 12. “This is a local issue,” he said. “I don’t think [other localities] care about it. They don’t think about it everyday or care about it.”

Despite the publicity here, Higgins said to expect jurors to be completely ignorant of a case to remain impartial “would establish an impossible standard.” Should Kessler be unable to find impartial jurors, she took the motion under advisement, which gives her the option to move the trial if necessary.

Outside the courthouse, Kessler said told reporters they had “already prejudiced a jury pool.” He added, “This media here locally is a fucking joke.”

Hallahan seemed less bitter when asked if his client could get a fair trial. “I hope so,” he said.

Correction: Robert Tracci said the January 4 Daily Progress story was accurate, and was not speaking of all media accounts as originally reported.

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Kessler harassment charge dropped

Jason Kessler, right, says he's the victim of "political prosecutions." Staff photo

A charge against white-rights provocateur Jason Kessler for posting online the address of activist Emily Gorcenski was dismissed January 18.

“The victim brought information to us that made her believe Mr. Kessler was not the person who posted information about her,” said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony. She said the case remains under investigation.

Outside the courthouse, Kessler said, “This is just the latest in a series of unsubstantiated political prosecutions meant to drag my name through the mud.”

Gorcenski said she’d experienced “an extreme amount of internet harassment from white nationalists,” including doxing, death threats and a swatting incident in which police were called to her home with a false report that someone was brandishing a gun. Kansas resident Andrew Finch, 28, was killed December 28 when a call about a fake hostage situation was made to police in Wichita.

“The fact some of these perpetrators are willing to participate in violent harassment without concealing their identities shows how brazen these white supremacists are in continuing to terrorize Charlottesville,” said Gorcenski.

“Online harassment is not mere trolling,” she continued. “It is not harmless, but a serious and potentially violent concern that affects all people in the community.”

Kessler will be back in court January 30 with a motion to move his perjury trial on the basis he’s unable to get a fair trial in Albemarle County.