Tag: robert tracci

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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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Watching their backs: Cantwell’s request for change of venue and special prosecutor denied

Chris Cantwell, center, and his security detail with Gregory Conte and Eli Mosley is led by attorney Elmer Woodard, right, into Albemarle Circuit Court. Staff photo

 

Another high-profile case went through Albemarle County Circuit Court on January 31, where motions for a self-proclaimed racist who found himself in trouble after the weekend of the Unite the Right rally had two motions denied and one granted.

Christopher Cantwell is accused of using a caustic substance on counterprotesters at the August 11 brawl between torch-wielding white supremacists and anti-racists at the University of Virginia.

Defense attorney Elmer Woodard, who represents several of the alt-right men facing charges from the deadly mid-August weekend, said Cantwell won’t be able to get a fair trial in Albemarle County. He asked to take his client’s trial, which is scheduled exactly six months after August 12, to a different locality.

“Mr. Cantwell’s got some men with him because it’s dangerous for him to move around Charlottesville,” Woodard told Judge Cheryl Higgins. When Cantwell entered circuit court that day, he was accompanied by an entourage that included Woodard, the attorney’s assistant and former Identity Evropa leader Eli Mosley.

Because Cantwell has such a high profile, Woodard said he expects a mob scene at each hearing—like the one at Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s August 13 press conference, where he was tackled to the ground and rescued by police.

The attorney told the judge before he and the suited men entered the building, they hid in the general district court “because we’re vulnerable.” He apparently scanned the vicinity before leading the group from one courthouse into the other. “My assistant, his job is to look behind me,” Woodard added.

Aside from this reporter and one man waiting for his own hearing, no one was outside the courthouses. “Who are those guys?” the man asked after Cantwell and his apparent security detail entered the building and the door closed behind them.

Among the entourage was Gregory Conte, who identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a Tyr 1 Security employee and the director of operations at the National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer’s white nationalist think tank based in Alexandria.

Conte formed the security company with his partner, Brian Brathovd, who is reportedly Spencer’s bodyguard. Conte never entered the courtroom, but stayed in the lobby where he appeared to be guarding a black box full of cell phones, which are prohibited inside.

In court, Woodard noted several instances of what he called “prejudice and excitement” from the local community, including press coverage from NBC29 and WINA and a publication he called “Charlottesville Today.”

He said the cars of alt-right members who came to support Cantwell at his November 9 preliminary hearing were towed. The cars were parked in a private church lot, and sources say the church had the vehicles removed.

“I used a transport service so my car can’t be traced,” Woodard said. He alleged that a woman tried to smuggle a steak knife into one of another client’s hearings in Charlottesville General District Court, and she told deputies the metal detector was beeping because she had a hip replacement.

For the second time that week in Albemarle Circuit Court, an attorney expressed worry about “sleeper activists” who could sit on the jury with the intention of convicting his client.

The day before Cantwell’s hearing, Kessler’s attorney expressed the same concern. The judge denied Kessler’s motion to move his trial out of Albemarle, and she did the same for the so-called “Crying Nazi,” who was given that name after he posted a tearful video to the web before turning himself in to Lynchburg police in August.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a Nazi,” Cantwell said in a jail interview in September. “I came down [to Charlottesville] because I think that I fucking have rights and that I don’t deserve my fucking race to be exterminated from the planet. Not everybody who’s skeptical of Jews is a fucking socialist, okay?”

Judge Higgins also denied his attorney’s request for a special prosecutor for the three-day trial, though Woodard explained that he may want to call Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci as a witness, resulting in a mistrial and “a very, very, very upset judge.”

Depending on the answers from witnesses Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad—who originally made statements that Cantwell sprayed them with pepper spray on August 11—Woodard said he’d like to question Tracci about some of their previous testimony.

Legal expert David Heilberg says calling the commonwealth’s attorney as a witness “is extremely rare and it might be a ploy to disqualify the prosecutor.”

“I find it is too speculative,” said Higgins as she denied the motion.

However, she did grant a final motion to amend Cantwell’s bond to allow him to go anywhere within the undisclosed Virginia city where he currently resides.

After the hearing, Christian Picciolini waited on the courthouse steps for Cantwell to exit and called out to Cantwell that he just wanted to talk.

“You have my phone number, loser,” Cantwell spat back at him.

Piccolini was recruited to join the Chicago Area Skinheads, America’s first group of neo-Nazis, at the age of 14.

“I used to be just like him,” Picciolini says, but he disassociated himself from the movement in 1996. “I started to receive compassion 30 years ago from the people I least deserved it from.”

Christian Picciolini Staff photo

The Chicago man, who is the co-founder of a nonprofit called Life After Hate, says he wants to sit down with Cantwell and offer him the same support that helped changed his ideologies.

He adds, “Nobody’s born with a swastika flag under his pillow.”

 

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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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‘Crying Nazi’: Judge dismisses two charges against Cantwell

Christopher Cantwell posted a tearful video online before turning himself into police. Cantwell video

Two of three felony charges were thrown out in a more than six-hour-long preliminary hearing November 9 for “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, the New Hampshire man accused of pepper spraying multiple people at the violent August 11 tiki-torch march across the University of Virginia.

Hundreds of white supremacists were in town that weekend for homegrown whites-righter Jason Kessler’s Unite the Right rally, which left three people dead and many injured in its aftermath.

In Cantwell’s case, an Albemarle General District Court judge is allowing one count of illegal use of tear gas to go before the grand jury, after he said Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci was unable to prove that the two victims who brought the charges against Cantwell were actually sprayed by the shock jock, who continues to broadcast his show, the Radical Agenda, from the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

His supporters, known for their fashy haircuts and white polos and khakis, coordinated new outfits this time. About a dozen of them lined the courtroom’s benches wearing black, some dressed head-to-toe in the color.

While Tracci claimed the inmate maliciously used pepper spray during the tiki-torch march, Cantwell himself, who appeared in a dark grey and white-striped jail jumpsuit and handcuffs, called it self defense.

“I said I would not attend the UVA demonstration unless we were coordinating with law enforcement,” he told Judge William Barkley during his testimony, but when there were no cops there to “protect [white nationalists] from the counterprotesters,” he said he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. And he came to Charlottesville prepared to do so.

He brought with him an AR-15, an AK-47, a Ruger LC9, a Glock, a folding knife and what he called the “now infamous can of pepper spray,” to name a few of the weapons he rattled off. He had a couple of ballistic vests with him, too, he said.

“I was hoping very much to avoid violence,” testified the white nationalist, who said he didn’t bring any of the firearms out on the night of August 11 because he was told that the university is a gun-free zone. When he didn’t have a tiki torch at the march, he said he was asked to walk on the outside of the group and work security for the group of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

“I was on edge the entire time because [counterprotesters] kept bumping into people with torches,” Cantwell said. When asked if he was taken aback by the heatedness of the march, he said, “It’s difficult to say that I was surprised because I talk about this stuff for a living. I know these people are dangerous.”

He later portrayed it as, “two groups of people who hated each other attacking one another and I was in the middle of it.”

Alleged victims Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad testified against Cantwell, describing being sprayed with a caustic substance and losing their vision, but the latter said video footage Tracci recently showed him displayed a man with a dragon tattoo—not Cantwell—macing him at least one of the times.

Cantwell’s attorney, Elmer Woodard, asked Goad multiple times why he did not leave the demonstration when he noticed things were getting out of hand. At this point on August 11, Goad, along with about 25 other counterprotesters, were encircled by about 300 chanting, torch-wielding white nationalists.

“I did not have an option to leave,” Goad said. “I was surrounded 360 degrees by hundreds of people.” To that, the attorney said, “You could have said excuse me, couldn’t you?”

The room erupted in laughter. And it did again, when Woodard suggested that perhaps it was the smoke from the tiki torches instead of mace that caused the victim’s faces to burn, or “maybe it was the citronella candles,” he said.

Along with dropping two of Cantwell’s charges, Judge Barkley also did not extend a protective order Gorcenski had against Cantwell, and said his bond prohibited him from contacting the woman, whom Woodard called an “antifa operative.”

Woodard’s assistant played Gorcenski’s own video footage, in which the attorney later pointed out that if she was pepper sprayed, she never audibly seemed to react to it. “She’s quiet as a mouse, which I’m pretty sure everyone in this room wishes I would be.”

Also present in the courtroom was Vice News’ Elle Reeve, who followed and interviewed Cantwell throughout the August 12 weekend, Kessler, who appeared in court a week ago to amend his bond on a perjury charge so he could take a job in Ohio, and Unite the Right organizer Eli Mosley.

Some of the white nationalists in town may have found their cars towed when they left court. Sources say the church where they parked had the vehicles removed.

Cantwell, who has been incarcerated since he turned himself in August 24, is expected to request bond November 13.

 

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Candid Cantwell: An afternoon with the ‘Crying Nazi’

Christopher Cantwell calls himself a political prisoner. Staff photo

In a minuscule, stagnant holding room just feet away from a barely bigger solitary confinement cell where he’s been housed since he turned himself in to police August 23, “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell, a self-proclaimed racist and alt-right radio shock jock, says he wishes he never came to Charlottesville.

Perhaps most notable for his appearance in VICE News Tonight’s segment on the events of August 11 and 12 called “Charlottesville: Race and Terror,” Cantwell is also the host of right-wing radio show “Radical Agenda,” and was billed as a speaker for the Unite the Right rally.

Jailed and denied bond for three felony counts related to allegedly pepper spraying two people during an August 11 tiki-torch march on Grounds at the University of Virginia, Cantwell denies those claims and says the only person he pepper sprayed that weekend didn’t file charges. He says his status as a “political prisoner” hasn’t kept him from preaching his doctrine.

That’s right. Cantwell is “LIVE from Seg!,” as in segregated from the general prison population. And though he can’t measure his analytics from a jail cell, he expects that more than 10,000 people have been tuning in to each episode to hear him gab with buddies Jared Howe, Mike Enoch and Jason Kessler.

The latter might come as a surprise. Kessler, the local champion of western heritage who organized the deadly rally and lambasted victim Heather Heyer on Twitter afterward, has since been given the ax by a lot of the whites righters he invited to his highly anticipated melee that some have called the largest gathering of white supremacists in recent history.

“Jason is a guy who picks up the goddamn phone when I call him, which I cannot say for everybody else,” says Cantwell. “A lot of people don’t want to talk to me, either, and so they might be a little more vocal about severing ties with Jason, but I pay attention to who picks up the goddamn phone when I call them. Jason picks up the phone. Jason records the calls. Jason sends them to the guy who’s running my website, so Jason is helpful to me in that he insists on my voice being heard.”

That being said, Cantwell criticizes Kessler for organizing the rally here: “If I had known what Charlottesville was, I wouldn’t have come here. And I gotta think there’s something wrong with a person who fucking thinks this is a good place to do what he did.”

He continues, “This city is run by the goddamn Red Army…and the idea that we’re going to fucking pull this off is crazy and he should have known that.” Mayor Mike Signer did coin Charlottesville as the “capital of the resistance” last January, after all.

Cantwell currently resides in solitary confinement in the intake department of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where alleged murderer James Alex Fields, who is accused of plowing into a crowd of counterprotesters with his Dodge Challenger at Unite the Right, killing one and injuring many, was a few cells over when the radio host first arrived. Fields has since been moved.

The guy who’s now looking at as much as 60 years in prison says, “you better believe I need a few bucks,” and has a couple of fundraisers linked to his website. Booted off the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, he has turned to alternative platform GOYFUNDME.

He’s faced harsh criticism for a remark in his interview with VICE’s Elle Reeve, where he said Fields’ actions that day, which many have called an act of domestic terrorism, were “more than justified.”

Now, wearing a black-and-white-striped jumpsuit and bright orange slip-on shoes, and sucking on a hard candy, he says he may have second thoughts about that statement. After the VICE documentary aired, Cantwell says he had a conversation with someone claiming to be an FBI agent, who told him Fields drove through two blocks of clear roads with no foot traffic, and that he could have turned his car away from the crime scene at any time instead of mowing down more than 20 people.

“That gives me a second to pause and say ‘what the hell was he doing there?’” Cantwell says. “What I saw was a video of his car surrounded by communist rioters who had just pepper sprayed me twice in as many days and hit his car with a baseball bat. I knew these people were dangerous. So when he’s in that position and they attack him and he has no idea what to do and he just hits the gas, from that information, that looks reasonable to me.”

But Cantwell insists he never wanted trouble when he came to Charlottesville toting three pistols and two assault rifles.

“We didn’t come down here to start a riot,” he says. “We didn’t come down here to kill nobody. And we had a permit. I was invited to speak by a demonstration that had a permit and was championed by the ACLU, and in return for my trouble, I got maced.”

He says the idea that the white nationalists came to town to start a race riot or to terrorize people is “complete nonsense,” and that they came to defend white rights.

“I think that we have civil rights like everybody else, and so when people say that we’re racists and terrorists for standing up for ourselves, our country and our history, well then do not act surprised when we get pissed off about that,” he says. And with hundreds of his comrades packing heat, he calls it “a miracle that only one person died.”

Cantwell was dubbed the “Crying Nazi” when he posted a tearful video of himself on the web before turning himself into police in Lynchburg. He says he’s not a fan of the title.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a Nazi,” he says. “I came down here because I think that I fucking have rights and that I don’t deserve my fucking race to be exterminated from the planet,” he says, and adds that not everyone who’s “skeptical of Jews” is a Nazi. “I came down here because I feel like my country is going to shit. I came down here because the rule of law is going out the window and you get prosecuted for felonies because people disagree with your politics in America. That’s worth crying about.”

Regardless, he says he has a lot of time on his hands and he’s been reading a copy of Mein Kampf sent courtesy of an anonymous friend—or foe.

When Cantwell was originally thrown in the hole, he said it was his personal request to stay in solitary confinement. But now that he’s been denied bail and jailed for longer than he expected, he’s been advised that “the guy who kills [him] becomes a celebrity,” so joining the general population would not be a good idea.

“I’m not particularly happy about it,” Cantwell says. “But, after all, I’m in here for a false accusation that stems from me defending myself. The last thing I need to do is get put into a cage full of fine, upstanding, young black gentlemen who decide they’re going to beat up the Nazi and then I gotta defend myself. And if I put someone in the fucking ICU, that’s probably going to come up in court.”

Cantwell is scheduled to appear November 9 with attorney Elmer Woodard in Albemarle County General District Court, where if it goes anything like his last appearance, Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci will try to use some of the inmate’s own comments to keep him locked up.

“Well, you know, I’m a shock jock. I offend people professionally,” Cantwell says. “If we’re going to talk about all the nasty things I said on the internet, we’re going to be here for a while.”

Corrected September 26 at 10am. The original version identified Jason Kessler as a Proud Boy. The Colorado Proud Boys reached out and said his only involvement was participating in a meet up and being disavowed.

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Legal question: Can supes order Albemarle court move?

Albemarle County officials want to move their courts out of Court Square. Staff photo

When the Albemarle Board of Supervisors passed a 4-2 resolution on November 2 directing county staff to explore options to relocate one or both of its houses of justice from downtown’s Court Square, Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci fired back with a letter questioning whether the supes even have the authority to make such a move.

The board “lacks any legal, institutional, substantive or practical basis” to make decisions about the administration of justice, wrote Tracci. “The board is a legislative body with limited executive power—it has no judicial or law enforcement authority whatsoever.”

The idea of moving Albemarle’s circuit and general district courts from Court Square has met wide opposition from those in the legal community, including both city and county prosecutors, sheriffs, clerks of court, Judge Cheryl Higgins, public defenders, Legal Aid Justice Center and the barristers who practice in city and county courts.

“The Board of Supervisors is totally ill-equipped to ascertain whether dismembering Court Square will undermine the quality of justice in our community,” says Tracci. “They are a quasi-legislative executive body with no judicial authority whatsoever and their overreach here is breathtaking.”

Bruce Williamson, chair of the Bench-Bar Relations Committee at the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, says the members of the BOS are “not well-suited by their training and experience with the legal system to make decisions on the administration of justice and the people who are are the ones who signed that letter”—a missive dated November 2 that urges the board to keep county courts in Court Square.

“This has been couched as a matter of convenience for lawyers,” says Williamson. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Adding in travel time to the urban ring would increase costs, reduce the number of cases public defenders could take and keep more people incarcerated while they wait for a hearing,” he says.

Although the plan had long been to renovate the Levy Opera House across the street from the county courts, with the city pitching in $7 million, supervisors “were surprised” last summer to find the city had done nothing about parking, says Williamson, and they “were taken aback” when the city asked them to pony up $2.5 million for parking.

Earlier this year, the supes directed county staff to examine options for courts, including moving the general district court to the County Office Building on McIntire Road, as well as moving both general district and circuit court to a new county location in the urban ring, ideally with a private partnership.

“County staff is clearly in favor of tying economic development to moving the courts,” says Williamson. “For decades, [the county] has not attracted jobs. The courts should not be the engine of economic development.”

The county seat is where the circuit court is located, and to move the circuit court would require a referendum of Albemarle voters, according to code. As for moving the general district court, the answer varies, depending upon whom you ask.

A call to Supervisor Diantha McKeel resulted in a written response from County Attorney Greg Kamptner, who says Virginia code makes the Board of Supervisors responsible for providing courthouses—and for footing the bill of such facilities.

“The board will not decide whether the court facilities are to be relocated from their current location in Court Square in downtown Charlottesville,” writes Kamptner. That decision rests with the voters of Albemarle, he says. “The board’s role is to consider adopting a resolution asking the court to order that election.”

According to Williamson, to move the general district court, the BOS has to have the approval of the General Assembly.

Delegate Rob Bell refers that question to Dave Cotter in the General Assembly’s division of legal services, and Cotter gets into the weeds of murkily written legislation.

Cotter says, according to Virginia code, county supervisors don’t have the authority to move the general district court, which the law requires be located at the county seat. However, the chief judge or the presiding judge—the code lists both—can authorize an additional general district court, much as Richmond has done with additional general district courts.

Albemarle’s general district court webpage lists Judge Bob Downer as both the chief and presiding judge, and Judge William Barkley as the presiding judge. So does that mean one or both of them determine the fate of a lower court move?

“It’s not the Board of Supervisors’ decision to move the general district court,” says Cotter. “Only the chief judge can make the decision to meet somewhere in addition to the county seat.”

Confusing?

The last time this statute was interpreted by the attorney general was in 1973. Says Cotter, “A lot of this language has been sitting here and no one has been paying attention.”

Augusta County had a referendum to move its county seat from Staunton to Verona on the ballot November 8. Voters rejected that relocation.

 Correction 11/17/16: Bruce Williamson said the city wanted the county to contribute $2.5 million for parking, not $12.5 million.

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Interact this way: Albemarle police pocket guide raises concerns

Albemarle’s new police chief, Ron Lantz, wants to foster cooperation during encounters with police. Eze Amos

A just-printed Albemarle County Police Department pamphlet was intended to build trust and cooperation between citizens and law enforcement during interactions that are now under a national spotlight. Its content, however, has alarmed some local attorneys, who say the guide’s instructions are incorrect or even unconstitutional.

“The document is very concerning,” says Legal Aid Justice Center’s Emily Dreyfus, who has held workshops on dealing with the police for kids in low-income neighborhoods. “I am always glad to see increased efforts at building positive relationships, but the pamphlet doesn’t adequately speak to the rights of the public.”

For example, people always have the right to remain silent, but the pamphlet says that right only becomes available when someone is taken into custody, she says. “This document mistakenly implies people are required to reveal their citizenship status,” she says.

The pamphlet, “Building Trust and Cooperation: A Guide to Interacting with Law Enforcement,” encourages people to record information if they have an interaction with a police officer that didn’t go well, but doesn’t say how to file a complaint and what will happen afterward, she says.

Last year Charlottesville police and the Office of Human Rights published its own pocket guide called “Your Rights and Responsibilities.”

Albemarle’s is “not a know-your-rights pamphlet,” says county police Chief Ron Lantz. “Cooperation is the key.” The side of the road is not the place to discuss whether the stop is justified and that’s why the guide provides numbers for citizens to call if they have a complaint, he says. “It’s all about working with the police.”

The project was started by his predecessor, Steve Sellers, and “was one of my first priorities,” says Lantz. Lehman Bates, pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church and a member of the African American Pastors Council, Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci and Sin Barreras, a nonprofit that works with mostly Hispanic immigrants, helped create the guide.

lehmanBates-ezeBates wanted to work on a tool for traffic stops, which have become a “flash point” between citizens and police. “As a pastor and as an African-American, because of our history and because of current events, it was important for me to have this type of tool so those types of incidents do not occur,” he says.

For constitutional attorney and Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead, who just published his latest commentary, “All the Ways You Can Comply and Still Die During An Encounter with Police,” not informing people of their rights is a glaring omission. “You don’t have to stop to talk to police,” he says. “You can walk away. If stopped while driving, you don’t have to automatically open your car for a search.” The pamphlet implies people have to allow pat downs, but police must have “reasonable suspicion” to do so, says Whitehead.

“It stops short of saying: Here are your rights, we can get along as long as you obey the police,” he says. “Case law does not support what is in the brochure.”

And Whitehead wonders why, with nationally known civil liberties groups here, police didn’t ask for some feedback.

Civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel is even more critical. “This is outrageous,” he says. “It should be titled, ‘You Must Be Obedient to the Police.’ Some of it is flatly wrong or deceiving.”

The brochure instructs, “You must not physically resist, obstruct or be abusive toward the police.” According to Fogel, citizens have the right to resist an unlawful arrest or the use of excessive force, and they have the right to curse at a police officer.

Fogel represents plaintiffs alleging racial profiling in three civil lawsuits he filed in February against the county and Albemarle officer Andrew Holmes.

The suits have nothing to do with the pamphlet, the work on which started more than a year ago, according to Lantz.

“Traffic stops are one of the most dangerous things we do,” he says. He’s implementing a “three-minute rule,” in which officers explain why they’re pulling over a driver and that it’s not just about writing tickets, he says.

“It is of vital importance for members of the public to realize that it is both improper and unlawful to resist or obstruct law enforcement in the conduct of their lawful duties,” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracci. “The pamphlet also encourages citizens to report any abuse or impropriety that may occur.”    

Currently the department has printed 100 copies of the four-page pocket guide in English and in Spanish, and when there are more, Lantz wants his officers to hand them out.

Critics hope the next printing will have some changes.

“Our community values collaboration, and I hope this pamphlet can be updated through a process that includes people from a range of viewpoints, so that we can make sure information is easily understood and fully explains people’s rights and responsibilities,” says Dreyfus. 

“How about a brochure on how the Albemarle Police Department will respect your constitutional rights?” suggests Fogel. “That would likely foster better cooperation between the PD and the community.”

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Protecting the elderly

Robert Tracci Photo by Jen Fariello

Elder abuse isn’t always physical, says Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci, who describes a case that recently came through his office.

An at-home care provider hired an employee who stole more than $20,000 worth of valuables from an elderly client. The employee sold the family heirlooms to a pawn shop and melted some down for gold before the theft was reported, according to Tracci.

“If she received $12,000 from area pawn shops, the value of the items stolen was at least twice or three times that value,” Tracci says.

Elder abuse has many faces, including physical, mental, emotional, financial and sexual abuse, according to the prosecutor. Tracci and a slew of partners—including Charlottesville’s Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, elder law attorney Doris Gelbman, city, county and state police, nursing homes, hospitals, area banks, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Adult Protective Services—announced the creation of the Jefferson Area Coalition to End Elder Abuse June 15.

“Senior citizens are sometimes reluctant to freely report abuse or mistreatment because their caretaker or even family member may retaliate against them,” Tracci says. “We cannot control whether we age, but we must ensure our seniors are permitted to live with the security and dignity they deserve.”

The JACEEA will work to “promote the dignity and security” of senior citizens and make Central Virginia among the safest places to retire.

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Graduation day: Albemarle will continue drug court

Drug Treatment Court coordinator Susan Morrow works often with Albemarle Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Baird. She says the program is a lot like boot camp. Photo by Martyn Kyle

“I’m tired of being addicted to crack cocaine,” announced a heavy-set man in his early 60s from the front of the courtroom. “I’m free. I can pay my bills on time. I can truly be with my wife.”

The Charlottesville/Albemarle Drug Treatment Court celebrated the graduation of two participants on March 31 from the program that started in 1997.

When Robert Tracci was elected Albemarle County’s commonwealth’s attorney in November, new referrals to the drug court from his office appeared to dry up for a time, and some people feared drug court would no longer be viable without new participants from the county.

“For the last five or six months, prior to the changeover, we were getting more [referrals] from the county,” says Susan Morrow, drug court coordinator, when asked about the rate of referrals. “When Mr. Tracci first started there was definitely a lull. And I think it might have been having a whole bunch of other stuff thrown at him.” Immediately upon taking office, Tracci assumed responsibility for the Jesse Mathew Jr. murder cases.

Tracci says he was doing his due diligence on the referrals. “I can tell you, there were a couple of cases where the former commonwealth’s attorney agreed to permit people to enter drug court who were not otherwise eligible,” he says. “I had to do my due diligence. That doesn’t reflect a lack of interest in drug court but a commitment to the criteria.”

Defendants plead guilty to the charge and agree to begin a process of constant supervision and treatment for drug use in exchange for eventually having their charges dropped. Getting through drug court takes a minimum of 12 months and about 35 percent of graduates will reoffend within three years, compared with more than 80 percent of similar defendants who are sent to prison instead.

“While people are here they are in an extremely rigorous program,” says Morrow. Participants are drug-screened five days a week, in treatment four days a week and in court in front of a judge once a week. If they have a positive drug test they could be incarcerated. Doing time is a lot easier, says Morrow. “Trying to fix an addiction is really hard. The two folks you saw graduate today, for 12 months it was like boot camp.”

Throughout the morning after graduation at drug court, participants took turns standing before Judge Richard Moore, who looked over paperwork for each and asked them how their week had gone. Sometimes he praised someone for his honesty or for finding work. In other cases, he chastised laziness or poor excuses.

Moore seemed to be part judge and part therapist. “Being sober scares me,” confessed one man. “There are so many things I’m running away from.”

“I know,” replied Moore in a sympathetic tone. “Drug court is about drugs not having control of your life.”

Most people in the program have more problems with which to deal than just drug addiction. “Many of them have mental health problems that have not been diagnosed,” says Morrow. Some have problems with their living situation, and the program refers them to other agencies, including Region Ten.

Opiate and heroin addiction cases are more prevalent than what the drug court was seeing three years ago, says Morrow.

Tracci agrees. “There isn’t as much of it here as there is in other counties [in Virginia] but it has been on the rise,” he says.

“I’m a supporter of the drug court,” says Tracci. “I’m committed to drug court in appropriate circumstances. This provides an alternative to incarceration and reduces recidivism. There is constant monitoring. Overall, no system is perfect, but this one shows great promise.”

Since drug court’s first docket, about 350 people have graduated while 50 percent flunked out and were required to face the conventional justice system, often serving time behind bars.

Back at drug court graduation, the wife of the man who was tired of being addicted to crack stood up to speak. “I can go to sleep before he gets home,” she says, “and I don’t have to worry if he’s out getting high.”

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Jesse Matthew pleads guilty, receives four additional life sentences

Jesse Matthew could be seen through an Albemarle County courthouse window on his way to entering a plea agreement for the murders and abductions of Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington. He was given four additional life sentences. Staff photo

 

Convicted murderer Jesse Matthew pleaded guilty to the first degree murders and abductions of both Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington in Albemarle County Circuit Court on March 2. He was given four life sentences—the maximum sentence for each count.

Matthew will avoid the death penalty because Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci nolle prossed his capital murder charge as part of the plea agreement. Tracci explained that the Commonwealth can re-indict Matthew for the capital murder charge if he should violate the terms of the plea agreement.

For the complete statement of facts about the Hannah Graham case, including a timeline of what happened on the night she was abducted, DNA conclusions and evidence gathered at Matthew’s apartment read Hannah Graham Statement of Facts 3-2-16. For the statement of facts about the Morgan Harrington case, read Morgan Harrington Statement of Facts 3-2-16.

Before the hearing, Matthew’s family and friends lined up to hug Harrington’s mother, Gil. Declining to give his own statement during the hearing, Matthew’s attorney said, “He is very sorry.”

Parents of both slain college students spoke about the impact the murders have had on their lives during and after the hearing.

Graham’s mother, Susan Graham, said, “When we imagine the trauma she endured at the hands of Matthew, our hearts break.” Though details of how Matthew abducted and killed each girl were typed up and handed to Judge Cheryl Higgins, they were not read aloud. Matthew’s attorney, Doug Ramseur, said he is unaware whether the parents have yet learned those details.

“Matthew dumped our girl’s body like a bag of trash,” Susan Graham said, adding that her daughter’s lifeless body was picked over by buzzards. Her daughter, an 18-year-old UVA student who disappeared September 13, 2014, was found dead several weeks later in a field off Old Lynchburg Road.

According to the statement of facts released by the county, the crop top Graham was last seen wearing the night of her abduction was found near her skeletal remains, unzipped and inside out. Her jeans were also found nearby, with one leg inside out and holes in the denim that had not been present earlier in the night.

Graham’s father, John, said many people thought his daughter would change the world. “She did change the world, but at a terrible price.”

Two of the life sentences Matthew was given March 2 pertained to Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who was last seen at a Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena on October 17, 2009. Her body was found in a field in January 2010, about five miles from where Graham’s body was found almost five years later.

Harrington’s father, Dan, said he lives in “a world that’s gone gray, flat and devoid of joy,” now that his “beautiful, smart, talented and bright” daughter is gone. “Our family has felt the pain of this loss every second of every day.”

He and his wife, Gil, have built an African school and founded a scholarship in Harrington’s name. They also created the Help Save the Next Girl nonprofit foundation to sensitize young women and girls to predatory dangers.

Ramseur spoke after the sentencing, saying “This is obviously not a day for celebration,” before media fired questions about his client, such as why Matthew didn’t apologize himself and if he ever explained why he murdered two young women. The attorney deflected the questions and said it’s “unfortunate” that, because Matthew won’t have a trial, the public might never hear evidence from the the defense. He did say in an initial statement during the hearing that Matthew decided to plead guilty because he didn’t want a death sentence “hanging over his head.”

Legal expert David Heilberg says most capital murder cases now end in plea bargains, and he expected this as the likely outcome for Matthew.

Now that the death penalty is off the table, Matthew’s four additional life sentences are debatably meaningless, Heilberg says. Last summer, Matthew was given three life sentences for abducting, violently sexually assaulting and attempting to kill a Fairfax woman in 2005.

“You only have one life to serve,” Heilberg adds. “At this point, it can’t get any worse.”
Watch a video of Gil Harrington addressing the public below.