Tag: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

Categories
News

The jury is out: Judge agrees councilors have immunity in Confederate statue case

The Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson statues have remained at their respective locations throughout the trial. (Staff photo)

Five current and former city councilors can breathe a little easier now that a judge has ruled they aren’t personally liable for their votes to remove two Confederate statues downtown.

Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore penned a letter to the opposing legal teams in Monument Fund v. Charlottesville on July 6, explaining that he determined the individual councilors have statutory immunity because they didn’t act with “gross negligence,” nor did they approve a misappropriation of funds. That gets current councilors Mike Signer, Wes Bellamy, and Kathy Galvin, as well as former officials Bob Fenwick and Kristin Szakos, off the hook for any personal liability in the case. It also means there’s no longer a need for a jury, and the two sides will proceed toward a bench trial tentatively scheduled for September.

The Monument Fund claims City Council violated state law when it voted to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in Market Street Park. It later amended the suit to include Council’s decision to take down the Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson statue located three blocks away from Lee after the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. The case has moved slowly since it was initially filed in March 2017, and several motions are still under review.

One of those motions is the plaintiffs’ request for a summary judgment on the defense’s equal protection argument under the 14th Amendment. The Monument Fund did make its case before the court, represented by University of Richmond law professor Kevin Walsh. He told Moore that while the plaintiffs don’t dispute that many people are offended by the monuments, no one is personally being denied equal treatment by the statues’ presence as “there is no right not to be offended.”

Chief Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson filed a written statement to the court but her team won’t make its oral argument until the next hearing, which is slated for July 31. She declined to comment until then.

With a jury off the table, the plaintiffs also backed down on their request for a change of venue. Instead, they’ll seek a new facility for the proceedings, because the air conditioning unit in the court’s temporary building is too loud and must be shut off during the hearings, making the courtroom much hotter during the summer.

They previously argued that it’d be impossible to compile an unbiased jury in Charlottesville due to the defendants’ roles as elected officials—now a moot point—and “incessant news coverage,” including that of C-VILLE Weekly, which they allege “savaged” the plaintiffs, according to the motion to move the trial.

Plaintiff Edward Dickinson Tayloe II is also suing C-VILLE Weekly, along with news editor Lisa Provence and UVA assistant professor Jalane Schmidt, for defamation for statements in this feature story. He is seeking $1 million plus $350,000 for punitive damages.  A copy of that complaint is here: tayloe v. c-ville.

Categories
News

Still here: White supremacy strikes again

North Downtown residents found fliers proclaiming that "it's okay to be white" on their front lawns this morning. Photo courtesy of Gail South

“It’s okay to be white.”

The sentence that first started popping up on high school and university campuses in November is the same one that was plastered onto dozens of fliers, folded into a neat square, stuffed into a sandwich bag with a rock in it and tossed on the lawns of North Downtown residents last night.

Neighbors on Cargil Lane, Marshall and Hazel streets and Locust and Watson avenues were some of many who awoke to find such a message on April 18.

“I think it’s supposed to be intimidating,” says Gail South, whose husband found their note around 7am. “Why on earth would someone do this?”

But Reverend Phil Woodson says it came as no surprise, because there have been almost 40 overt actions or events involving white supremacists in town since August of last year.

“One of the narratives that people like to think is that on August 12, we were invaded, that people came from somewhere else,” he says. “But the reality is that there’s still a large number of white supremacists who live in and around Charlottesville.”

He points to local cars that have since been spray painted with racial slurs, white supremacists who have interrupted City Council meetings and an enormous Confederate flag recently raised on the side of Interstate 64 in Louisa.

Charlottesville has been the target of racist fliers before, and the Winchester Star reports the KKK distributed 22 similar fliers-in-a-baggie in Frederick County April 8.

Flyering is activity that only takes one person, says Carla Hill at the Center for Extremism.

On Monday morning, Reverend Woodson arrived at the First United Methodist Church to find its nearby telephone poles stapled with similar fliers, and with one caught in the netting of the church’s scaffolding.

This flier was a Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson quote that read, “The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon; and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.”

Quotes on fliers stapled to nearby telephone poles were attributed to Charlottesville’s beloved Thomas Jefferson, though Monticello’s website says Plato, Felix Frankfurter and Anton Menger have been credited with the same quote: “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal men.”

Though members of the First United Methodist Church have been very vocal in their opposition to white supremacy, Woodson says he doesn’t believe the messages were directed toward them.

“I really think it was due to the high traffic that would have been downtown for the Tom Tom Festival,” he says. “Any time there’s going to be a large gathering of people, it presents an opportunity for these white supremacists to spread their discord and hatred.”

He adds that local residents should be aware of what’s happening, and that white supremacy doesn’t always look like a man marching down Market Street with a swastika flag in tow.

“We can’t seem to get the vast majority of the community to understand that this is still happening and it’s going to take every single person to get involved in order to make a difference,” the reverend says.

Woodson nods to the Concert for Charlottesville, the free night of “music and unity” that drew Dave Matthews, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and other stars to town in the wake of August 12.

“How many thousands of people showed up to a Dave Matthews Band concert at the UVA football stadium, and how many of those people are actually engaged in confronting white supremacy?”

Categories
News

Confederates convicted: Statue unshrouders say they’ll appeal

Brian Lambert and Christopher Wayne await the outcome of their March 26 trials. They were charged with multiple counts of destruction of property and trespassing for attempting to remove the black tarps from the once-shrouded General Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson statues in their respective parks. Photo by Eze Amos

Immediately following a March 26 trial in which Charlottesville’s Brian Lambert was found guilty of multiple charges of trespassing in Emancipation and Justice parks and attempting to remove the tarps from the shrouded statues, Lambert could be seen applying a trail of Confederate flag stickers on surfaces in the direction of the General Robert E. Lee monument.

Judge Joseph Serkes had just sentenced him to four years in jail, with all but eight months suspended, in a hearing where Lambert flashed a distinctive hand signal behind his back. With his right thumb forming a circle with his pointer finger, and his three additional digits in the shape of a “W,” he held the “white power” symbol for about 30 seconds before turning to wink at the few people who showed up to support him, including Jason Kessler.

Louisa attorney Richard Harry defended Lambert, while Richmonder Christopher Wayne was represented by Thomas Wilson on similar—but fewer—destruction of property and trespassing charges. Wayne was sentenced to three years, of which all were suspended but five months.

The Richmond man’s trial was unorthodox, and he engaged in several debates with the judge. Lambert patted him on the back multiple times in what appeared to be an effort to get Wayne to stop talking.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Cooper Vaughan said Wayne’s frequent outbursts and repeated tampering with the city’s tarps after being arrested were an indicator of his disrespect for the City Council’s August decision to shroud the Confederate statues while the city mourned the deaths that took place during the summer’s Unite the Right rally.

“He’s absolutely right,” Wayne said.

“They believe these laws do not apply to them,” said Vaughan, who added that active jail time was the only way to convey to the men that there are consequences for breaking the rules.

Lambert also was charged with assaulting the Reverend Seth Wispelwey, a United Church of Christ minister, in the early morning hours of November 5, when the clergy member testified he was walking to his parked car on Second Street when he saw and heard what appeared to be someone cutting down the orange fencing surrounding the Lee monument.

Wispelwey said he called out to Lambert that he was trespassing.

“He said, ‘Yeah, I’m trespassing. What are you going to do about it?’ And started coming at me with a knife [with a six-inch blade] in his hand,” said Wispelwey.

But a Charlottesville police officer testified that when he apprehended Lambert, the man had a box cutter and a firearm on him, but no such knife.

Lambert was found not guilty of assault in that interaction, but the officer said he was unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, and he told the cop his name was “Brian Brian.” He was charged with public swearing or intoxication and paid the $25 fine on December 28.

In the same November interaction, the officer said Lambert made a “spontaneous utterance” that he had cut the tarp off the statue “at least seven times” by that point, and when he was caught doing so—also while apparently drunk—in a January 9 encounter, he told police he was “doing a public service,” according to another officer’s testimony.

“He told me he was never going to stop,” a third officer told the judge.

Judge Serkes reminded the men that they couldn’t keep taking matters into their own hands. “That’s why we’re a country of laws,” he said.

Outside the courthouse, Lambert took a drag from a cigarette.

“We’ll take our punishment like men,” he said.

The two plan to appeal their verdicts.

Christopher Wayne (center) was unhappy to see the media outside of the hearing in which he and Brian Lambert (right) were sentenced to jail time. Staff photo

 

Corrected March 27 at 4pm to more accurately reflect the length of the blade Lambert was allegedly carrying November 5.

Categories
News

Mourning period: Judge considers whether Confederate statue tarps are temporary

A judge will decide by February 27 if the tarps that shroud statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson should be removed. Photo by Eze Amos

Over the weekend, unknown persons three times did what plaintiffs in a lawsuit against City Council want done: removed the tarps covering statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Almost exactly a year after City Council voted 3-2 to remove the statues on February 6, 2017, Judge Rick Moore heard a motion from plaintiffs in Charlottesville Circuit Court February 5 asking that the tarps covering the statues be removed immediately, and to fine the city if it doesn’t.

City Council voted to shroud the statues August 21 in mourning for the deaths of Heather Heyer and Virginia State Police Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates following the deadly August 12 Unite the Right rally. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit—11 individuals, the Monument Fund and the Sons of Confederate Veterans—contend that the city used mourning as a “pretext” and intends to permanently cover the statues with “trash bags,” according to attorney Braxton Puryear.

He cited a November 6 City Council resolution to create a new master plan for Emancipation and Justice parks that included screening to more elegantly conceal the statues. “There’s no fixed time for removal,” said Puryear. “They’re not temporary but permanent.”

The plaintiffs called a funeral director as an expert witness on mourning periods, despite Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson’s objection that he wasn’t an expert for dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic community event.

Hill & Wood’s John Mathis testified about various religious mourning practices, which Moore said were not relevant, as well as public mourning practices for deceased police officers or firefighters: mourning badges, bunting, flags at half mast, wreaths and processions.

Robertson asked about the significance of the first anniversary of a death, and Mathis said it was a milestone “for family, but not for the people who came to the funeral.”

“There’s no mourning period that goes on five months,” said Puryear.

He also argued that the city did not get approval from the Board of Architectural Review to cover the statues with “trash bags.”

Plaintiffs’ attorney Ralph Main called City Manager Maurice Jones as an “adversarial witness.” Jones said the tarps cost $3,000 each and City Council had discussed when the tarps would come off and that August 12, 2018, was a possibility.

The tarps unlawfully interfere with the statues and prevent citizen enjoyment of them, said Main. “We have them to see them,” he said, comparing the draping with going to Paris to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, only to find it covered because “someone may not like Leonardo’s views.”

Robertson said it made sense to look at the first anniversary to end the mourning period because the event is now “referred to by the date it happened.”

That’s what gave Moore pause.

He said he needed more time before making a decision. His biggest concern is that since the decision to shroud August 21, “Council has had plenty of time to say how long” the statues should remain covered and then the city comes to court and says it should be one year, he said. “That’s what I’m struggling with.”

Moore says he’ll have a decision on the tarps by February 27 when he hears the city’s demurrer on the lawsuit. He also set a couple of trial dates for the lawsuit against City Council: January 31-February 1, 2019, for a two-day trial, and October 26 if the parties decide they can do it in one day.

After the hearing, statue-supporting attorney Lewis Martin is confronted by a woman who opposes the Confederate monuments. Staff photo
Categories
News

‘Trash bags’ can stay: Statue lawsuit moves forward

A judge will decide by February 27 if the tarps that shroud statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson should be removed. Photo by Eze Amos

In the case of whether the city’s longstanding General Robert E. Lee statue should remain on its feet, a judge ruled October 4 that a lawsuit protecting it can go forward, and the black shrouds temporarily draped over Lee and his buddy, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, can also stay.

In Charlottesville Circuit Court, S. Braxton Puryear—one of several attorneys representing plaintiffs who want to overrule City Council’s March decision to remove the Lee statue—argued that the tarps could cause irreparable harm to the monuments.

“It’s not a shroud, it’s a trash bag,” he said, bringing to mind an image of the statues as giant bags of leaves set out on the curb.

The city’s Parks and Recreation department sheathed Lee and Jackson August 23, to mourn the loss of Heather Heyer and two Virginia State Police officers, who died during the August 12 white supremacist rally.

“Every minute those covers are in place, there’s harm being done,” Puryear said, and he cited evidence from experts on corrosion and aeronautics, who testified that the tarps could trap moisture that corrodes the statues, or catch like a sail in the wind and blow the whole monument over.

A stifled snarl could be heard from someone who appeared to believe Charlottesville winds are incapable of blowing away a massive bronze war memorial.

Lisa Robertson, the deputy city attorney representing Charlottesville in the case, motioned to strike all of the plantiffs’ evidence, and said she doesn’t think the shrouds have caused irreparable harm to the statues.

“Like it or not, since the covers have gone on, things seem to have calmed down,” she said. She called City Manager Maurice Jones to the stand, who said Parks and Rec employees intermittently check on the statues and haven’t reported any damages.

The shrouds have, however, been ripped from the statues so many times we’ve lost count. Now, Lee and Jackson are surrounded by orange fencing and no trespassing signs. Moore ruled they can stay that way for an undisclosed amount of time, so long as the coverings and barriers are temporary.

The judge also ruled that while a Virginia statute protecting war memorials does apply in this case—a major win for the plaintiffs—they have not convinced him that the Lee sculpture falls into that category. He gave them 21 days to amend their pleading and refile.

The code says it’s illegal for any locality “to disturb or interfere with any [war] monuments or memorials so erected, or to prevent its citizens from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation and care of the same.”

Puryear’s pretty sure the Lee and Jackson statues are war memorials. “These are not a couple of old guys out riding on a horse,” he said. “These are Confederate generals.”

Plaintiffs also asked the judge to extend the injunction of the removal of the statue until May 2018, but he ruled that he would not expand it further than its November expiration date. He did allow the injunction to include the Jackson monument, because City Council has also voted to remove that one, too.

Robertson offered to tell the court the full costs of the Unite the Right rally on August 12, and said the “sole purpose” of the deadly white supremacist gathering was to protest the removal of General Lee.

Judge Moore called her comment a “red herring,” meant to distract from the questions at hand in the lawsuit.

“No one had to show up to confront those people,” Moore said, accompanied by groans from those in favor of tearing the statue down. “The statues didn’t cause anything. People did.”

Robertson replied, “Your honor, you don’t have to tell me that.”

Categories
News

Statues shrouded: Black plastic covers Lee and Jackson

In fewer than 48 hours after City Council unanimously passed a resolution to cover statues of generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the black tarps went up over the monuments this afternoon to commemorate the city’s mourning over the deaths following a hate-filled rally August 12.

The draping went up without public notice from the city, with the bucket trucks in Emancipation Park, formerly known as Lee Park, signaling the swathing of the Confederate monuments.

Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, who in the same park a year and a half ago called for the removal of the statues, initially was silent as Lee was swaddled in black plastic. “I’ve learned it’s best.” he says, when pressed for comment.

After the city turned the lights out on Stonewall Jackson in Justice Park, he told reporters that shrouding the statues isn’t a be all, end all, but a step in the right direction of eventually removing them and placing them in a museum with historical context. And other localities that have recently toppled their Confederate statues used similar language to Charlottesville’s in their order, but didn’t face a lawsuit.

Musician/activist Jamie Dyer says, “Symbolically, it’s a good start,” but he’d still like to see the statues gone.

“What’s going to change?” asked Roshi Hill, who filmed the Lee shrouding with her black cell phone. “It’s a statue. It’s been here forever and to take it down changes nothing.”

Instead, she suggests City Council stop granting permits for the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups to assemble in the town’s parks. She also supports renaming Emancipation Park after Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old activist who died during the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

“She lost her life over this statue,” Hill says.

Before alt-right and neo-Nazi groups dubbed Charlottesville their battleground, the African American woman says she knew she could smile at anyone she crossed and they’d smile back. Now, she says minorities have to stop and think before interacting with white people. And when one is walking behind her, she says she stops to let him pass in front of her.

“I don’t like having to feel uneasy,” Hill says. “Do they still love us?”

Others were dismayed by the draping. Brian Lambert was walking by when he saw the cherry pickers. “It’s disappointing,” he says. “It’s just disappointing.”

He nodded toward Bellamy. “To see that man gloating,” he says. “It’s sickening.”

There have been threats that the black plastic shroud will be removed, and Lambert thinks that’s likely to happen before Friday. “This will not stand,” he says. “This tarp will be taken down. It’s illegal.”

Says Lambert, “If people are offended, there’s plenty of free therapy available.”

A lawsuit filed against the city for ordering the removal of the statues will be heard again in court September 1, and Lambert thinks the violent rally of white supremacists and neo-Nazis will affect the judge. “I think they would have been successful with the lawsuit except for recent events,” he says.

Local attorney Lewis Martin says he believes, according to Virginia code, covering the statues could also be illegal.

“It shall be unlawful to disturb or interfere with any monuments or memorials,” the code says. Adds Martin, “Clearly, if you cover it up so people can’t see it, it’s interfering.”—Samantha Baars and Lisa Provence