A partly cloudy day, late March, unseasonably warm. Two men look up as I step into a small clearing in the woods beyond the coal tower. “Hope I’m not bothering you.” “It’s cool,” one of them says. He moves over on the makeshift bench so I have room to sit down. “I saw you taking […]
Sometime in the late ’90s, while searching online for information on getting high via over-the-counter drugs, I stumbled across a bizarre website detailing the adventures of a bunch of punk rock kids living in a big house in the country, right outside my hometown of Charlottesville.
Woodberry Payne (pictured) says that certain places make good horses. But mostly, he said, what makes a good horse is something intangible inside them. It’s about a horse’s desire, what’s in a horse’s heart. (Photo by Carissa Dezort) The spring race at Foxfield is Saturday, April 28, and Woodberry Payne will be there as usual. […]
We wait in the sunshine, in the unexpected warmth of a late February day, for a sign from inside the courthouse that a verdict has been reached. The word verdict means, in it’s original Latin, “to say the truth,” but a legal verdict is the synthesis of 12 opinions into a single pronouncement. Commonwealth’s Attorney […]
At 6:30pm, after nine hours of deliberation, there was a verdict.
During jury selection, the prosecution asked each prospective juror if he or she would feel comfortable judging someone, a question that’s harder to answer than you might think. It’s in our nature to judge others, their hair, their clothes, how good looking or smart they are, we judge and convict people for a million minor […]
We watched as the last cars of the defense team’s train went careening off the rails.
A morning filled with the bizarre and the inconsequential, but ending with a flashback.
Thoroughness is, of course, to be desired in a lawyer, but Chapman is taking it to another level.
In actuality, only three people have seen the crime scene.