Decades-old murder cases in Suffolk, York County cited in watchdog reports on Virginia Parole Board
Investigation has been ongoing for almost a year
An ongoing investigation by Virginia’s state government watchdog agency has turned up more problems at the Virginia Parole Board, according to draft report summaries obtained by The Associated Press.
The Office of the State Inspector General has been investigating the parole board for nearly a year, since prosecutors and victims’ families across the state began raising concerns about the handling of cases last spring.
Previous reports, which state officials sought to keep from the public but were either released by GOP lawmakers or obtained by news outlets, have painted a picture of a board that for years or possibly decades did not properly notify victims when inmates were being reviewed for parole. The inspector general’s office has found repeated violations of the board’s own policies, and in some cases, state law.
The disclosures have led to calls for a legislative investigation, though so far no action has been taken. The positions taken on the controversy have largely fallen along partisan lines in a busy election year for Virginia.
The AP obtained two additional draft reports, dated in December and January, about investigations that have not previously been publicly disclosed.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Ralph Northam, Alena Yarmosky said the findings of the latest investigations have not been presented to the governor’s office. A spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office, Kate Hourin, declined to answer questions about the status of the investigations or why final conclusions have not yet been presented.
Hourin noted the reports “have not been finalized or circulated externally” by the inspector general’s office “and therefore, the allegations that may be contained in any drafts have not yet been verified.”
One report deals with the case of Hugh J. Brown, who confessed to fatally shooting Gwendolyn “Angel” Thomas, his pregnant girlfriend, and setting her body on fire in York County in 1992. He pleaded guilty to murder and other charges, and was sentenced to life in prison.
A person close to Thomas had been registered through a free automated notification system to get updates in his case but notifications were intentionally turned off and that person never had the chance to provide comment before Brown was released in May, according to the draft report.
The second draft report obtained by the AP found that the parole board’s former chair, Adrianne Bennett, violated the board’s policies and procedures when she unilaterally decided to release over 100 people from parole supervision early.
The report says the discharges happened in early to mid-April.
At the time, the state was pushing to accelerate the review of parole-eligible inmates because of the coronavirus pandemic and related concerns for the health of inmates living in crowded, communal settings.
Northam’s administration has previously objected to some of the inspector general’s findings and sought to correct others through legislation that was recently passed. Some Republican lawmakers say the legislative action doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Bennett, who is now a judge in Virginia Beach’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, has never responded to AP requests for comment and could not be reached Friday. A person who answered the phone at the courthouse said, “I’ve been advised there is no comment from the court,” and then hung up.
The current parole board chair, Tonya Chapman, did not respond to a request for comment. Chapman previously served as Portsmouth’s police chief and was the first Black female chief of police in a Virginia city.
Other reports recently obtained by the AP suggest the victim notification problem was long-running.
One deals with the case of Patrick Schooley Jr., who had served over 41 years for the kidnapping and murder of a 78-year-old Suffolk woman. Schooley first became eligible for parole in February 1997 and received his first parole review shortly before then, according to the report.
Records showed the parole board “did not perform any due diligence to notify the victims of this review or any subsequent reviews” until April 2019, the report said.
A 36-year-old Newport News man faces a minimum of 42 years behind bars after being convicted in 13 armed robberies between Fredericksburg and Hampton Roads.
After a four-day trial, a jury in U.S. District Court in Richmond convicted Christopher Ray Robertson on 20 counts in two separate robbery sprees in late 2013 and late 2014.
Two others — Michael Ellison, 30, of Newport News, and Robertson’s former girlfriend Aquilla Jones, 31, of Durham, North Carolina — previously pleaded guilty to robbery charges in the case, and both got about 15 years.
But Robertson, who prosecutors said “masterminded” the conspiracy, sought a jury trial. (A prior jury trial on the charges n 2019 ended in a mistrial).
Federal prosecutors said the conspiracy began in September 2013, when Robertson recruited Ellison to rob five businesses in central Virginia and Hampton Roads. They said Robertson selected the businesses, “directed Ellison’s actions,” and served as the lookout.
The men were accused of robbing or attempting to rob a Gulf gas station and Captain D’s Restaurant in Fredericksburg; a Big Lots on George Washington
Memorial Highway in York County; and a Fast Mart and Food Lion in Spotsylvania County.
The men “parted ways” in October 2013 “to evade law enforcement detection,” prosecutors asserted.
Robertson then moved to North Carolina, meeting Jones in Durham before they moved to Newport News in November 2014. That’s when Robertson got back i n touch with Ellison, with prosecutors saying that Robertson suggested starting up the robberies again.
That December, they said, Robertson, Jones and Ellison and a 16-year-old boy took part in eight more heists. Robertson again led the effort, prosecutors said, with he and his girlfriend acting as lookouts as Ellison and the juvenile donned masks and went into the stores with a gun.
Those included stick-ups of a Citgo Gas Station on J. Clyde Morris Boulevard in Newport News; a Shell gas station on Hampton Highway in York County; a Hop & Shop on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News; a MiniMart on Green Meadows Drive in Virginia Beach; and an attempted robbery at a Smoke Shop on Western Branch Boulevard in Chesapeake.
Bystanders at a December 2014 Subway restaurant robbery in Fredericksburg got a good description of
Ellison’s car — leading to his arrest in Spotsylvania and the conspiracy to unravel. Prosecutors said that Robertson’s phone was “in the vicinity of all of the 2014 robberies.”
After a four-day jury trial this week, Robertson was convicted of robbery conspiracy, 13 counts of interference with commerce by robbery, and six firearm counts. He faces a mandatory minimum of 42 years in prison and a maximum of life.
The then-juvenile, Ezekial Keaton, was prosecuted as an adult in Newport News Circuit Court on a robbery count, getting six years in prison. He will also be sentenced later this month on federal perjury, obstruction of justice and accessory charges.
R o b e r t o n ’s l a w y e r, Fernando Groene, said his client will fight the convictions. “We respect the jury’s verdict, but Mr. Robertson maintains his innocence ands intends to pursue all the avenues of appeal available to him,” he said.
Groene contended that the government’s case “rests mainly on three witnesses” — Jones, Ellison and Keaton — who “had a motive to lie to reduce their federal sentences.” In fact, he said, Jones and Keaton admitted to lying on the stand at Robertson’s earlier trial.
Ro b e r t s o n w i l l b e sentenced on July 20.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has two seats to fill on the influential appeals court in the nation’s capital that regularly feeds judges to the Supreme Court.
They are among the roughly 10% of federal judgeships that are or will soon be open, giving Biden his first chance to make his mark on the American judiciary.
Barring an improbable expansion of the Supreme Court, Biden won’t be able to do anything about the high court’s entrenched conservative majority any time soon. Justice Clarence Thomas, at 72, is the oldest of the court’s conservatives and the three appointees of former President Donald Trump, ranging in age from 49 to 56, are expected to be on the bench for decades.
Democrats traditionally have not made the judiciary a focus, but that is changing after four years of Trump and the vast changes he made. Biden’s appointments are also the only concrete moves he has right now to affect the judiciary at large, though there is talk about expanding the number of judges on lower courts.
The nearly 90 seats Biden can fill, which give their occupants life tenure after Senate confirmation, are fewer than former Trump inherited four years ago. That’s because Republicans who controlled the Senate in the final two years of the Obama White House confirmed relatively few judges.
Included in the tally are 10 seats on federal courts of appeals where nearly all appeals, other than the few dozen decided by the Supreme Court each year, come to an end.
One seat is held by Merrick Garland, whose confirmation as attorney general is expected in the coming days. Another longtime judge on the court, David Tatel, has said he is cutting back on his duties, a change that allows Biden to appoint his successor.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas were appellate judges at the courthouse at the bottom of Capitol Hill before they joined the high court. The late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also served on the appeals court.
Following Scalia’s death in February 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court, but Senate Republicans didn’t give him even a hearing, much less a vote.
When Trump took office less than a year later, he had a high court vacancy to fill. Trump ended up making three Supreme Court appointments to go along with 54 appellate court picks and 174 trial judges, aided by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Democrats and their progressive allies say they’ve learned a lesson or two from the Republicans, and intend to make judicial nominations a greater focus than in past Democratic administrations.
“It’s an exceptional situation where you have a president and the people around him people who really see this as a high priority,” said former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who served with Biden in the Senate for 16 years. Feingold is now president of the American Constitution Society.
So far, liberal groups are encouraged by the signals the White House is sending. White House counsel Dana Remus wrote senators in December that recommendations for new judges should come within 45 days
of a vacancy.
Biden already has pledged to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court if a seat opens up. Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, is the oldest member of the court and could retire, but he has not announced any plans.
Democrats are in search of several kinds of diversity, following the Trump years in which more than 75% of judicial nominees were men and 85% were white.
Liberal groups are also pushing for diversity of experience so that public defenders and public interest lawyers are considered along with big law firm lawyers and prosecutors who have predominated in recent administrations.
“Our view is we would like to see them prioritize experiential diversity, which would be new and different from the two previous Democratic administrations,” said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice.
So far, the judges who have announced they are retiring or taking senior status, the term for a reduced workload, have mainly been appointees of Democratic presidents. Some appear to have put off retirement until Trump left the White House.
An additional four dozen or so are eligible to take senior status or will be before Biden’s term ends in 2025. Such judges must be at least 65 years old and with 15 years of service on the bench.
But Democrats also are eyeing a major expansion of the judiciary for the first time in 30 years. The creation of new judgeships to deal increased caseloads in parts of the country could draw bipartisan support, though it might provide a windfall of judicial appointments for Biden in the short term.
Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo recently wrote about the need for another federal judge for his state, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., backs the addition of judges in California and other states.
“There is broad agreement here on the dais on both sides,” Issa said last month during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on court expansion.