About last year: Looking back at 2018 — News

By Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars Most of the biggest stories we followed this year were fallout from 2017: both the direct effects of the Unite the Right rally, with its continuing arrests and trials, and the continued furor over monuments, free speech, and present-day inequities as our city grapples with its full history. Martial […]

Justice: Fields found guilty on all counts in car attack

BY Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars Last Friday evening, almost 16  months after white supremacists invaded our town, many of the same counterprotesters who were there on August 12, 2017, were once again gathered on Fourth Street. It was the spot where James Alex Fields, Jr., a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi from Maumee, Ohio, had rammed his […]

Day 4: Jury seated, testimony begins in James Fields’ trial

It took three long days to seat a jury of 12 with four alternates. After all, it’s a national story and the video and photographs of a Dodge Challenger plowing into a group of counterprotesters have been viewed over and over. The defense does not dispute that James Alex Fields Jr., 21, was driving the […]

YOU issue: Who’s in jail?

Here’s what readers asked for: Pick one day and find out in Charlottesville and Albemarle County the name of everyone locked up in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail on that day, the reason they are there, and their anticipated release date.—Catherine Wray With close to 500 inmates in the regional jail, we pretty quickly nixed the […]

Day 1: Seating a jury in the James Fields trial

Lawyers for James Alex Fields, 21, the Ohio man charged with the first-degree murder of Heather Heyer and accused of plowing his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of demonstrators on Fourth Street August 12, 2017, suggested he may argue self defense in early questioning of potential jurors. Fields, a self-described neo-Nazi, is also charged with […]

Midterm madness: Can the 5th district be flipped?

In any other year, the Republican incumbent in the 5th District would be a shoo-in. But this year, two things make the election something of a horse race: One, Congressman Tom Garrett announced in late May that he would not seek a second term, leaving an open seat without the incumbent advantage. And two, Donald […]

False imprisonment: County settles lawsuit against five cops

Benjamin Burruss sat in his car in the Comfort Inn parking lot surrounded by Albemarle police. His employer had asked police to check on him when he didn’t show up for work. Burruss told the officers he did not intend to harm himself or anyone else, and the 12-gauge shotgun in his backseat was for […]

‘Middle ground’: Murphy pleads guilty to girlfriend slaying

  Trina Murphy has already sat through a long murder trial—that for the death of her niece, 17-year-old Alexis Murphy, in 2014. She did not want to do the same for her son. Xavier Murphy, 24, was charged with second-degree murder in the June 22 shooting of his girlfriend Tatiana Wells. Wells’ family also didn’t […]