Deal of the Day
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How did we get here? Published: April 01, 2009  Photo by Roslyn Ryan By Michael Copley, Staff Writer There is outrage in the community at the verdict returned in the Parrish cousins’ murder trial, after they were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 18-year-old Powhatan High School student Tahliek Taliaferro. And the anger and disappointment was on full display last Sunday, as hundreds of people gathered for a peaceful protest outside the Powhatan County courthouse. Charges that racism played a part in the jury’s decision surfaced just moments after the verdict was delivered last week. But does decrying the verdict as racist too casually reduce a set of complicated circumstances? Could there have been other elements, moments during court testimony that could have shaped the jury’s decision that had nothing to do with race? Could inconsistent testimony and the inevitable struggle to define reasonable doubt (see right) have brought us to this point? We don’t have to condone the events of June 24 to weigh the evidence in court objectively, to try and understand how we got here.
At 6:45 p.m. June 24, Powhatan Deputy Ron Gatti responded to the Loch Gate Subdivision, the first officer on the scene after a report of a possible shooting. When Gatti arrived, Tahliek Taliaferro was dead in the front seat of Lawrence Harris’ Saturn and “a gun was between the victim’s feet,” said Gatti. The deputy testified that he picked up the pistol, realized it was a loaded BB gun, and placed it on the roof of Harris’ car. Then he turned his attention to the victim. Powhatan Detective Jason Tackett arrived at the Loch Gate crime scene at 6:51 p.m. June 24. There he found an unloaded pistol BB gun in the trunk of Harris’ car. Tackett told the court he questioned all law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel about the movement of the BB gun, but no one could say how the gun got from the roof of Harris’ car to the trunk. Subsequent lab testing returned no latent finger prints on the gun, not even those of Deputy Gatti, who handled the BB gun bare-handed that night. What does ‘reasonable doubt’ actually mean? In the American legal system, it is the prosecutor’s task to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant or defendants committed the crime they are accused of. Issues may arise, however, when it comes to ascertaining just what “reasonable” means. “Nobody defines it, that’s the thing,” says Ronald J. Bacigal, a law professor at the University of Richmond’s School of Law. Despite the fact that jurors may struggle with the term, Bacigal says they generally get little assistance from judges. “When the jury comes back and asks what reasonable doubt is, the judge will [inevitably say] ‘whatever you think is reasonable.’ There is no real attempt to define it. You just turn it over to the good sense of the jury.”
According to their instructions, If the Commonwealth does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that “a killing happened; that the killing was malicious; and that the intended killing was willful, deliberate, and premeditated,” then the jury cannot find the defendant guilty of first degree murder and must consider a lesser charge. Each charge is considered through such a filter. To view a sample of the instructions given to jurors before the began deliberating , click here. Lawrence Harris told the court he did not see the gun on June 24 until Deputy Gatti pulled it out from under Taliaferro’s seat. Under cross examination, Harris repeated that Gatti retrieved the gun from under Taliaferros’s seat and that he did not see anyone in possession of the gun on June 24. Courtney Jones testified that he hadn’t known the BB pistol was in the car and that he saw no one in possession of a pistol. Defense attorney Craig Cooley was incredulous. “If the gun wasn’t used, why was it at Tahliek’s feet?” he asked the jury. “It follows common sense.” At a preliminary hearing in August, before authorities released information about the gun found in Harris’ car, Stephanie Reynolds testified she saw something black in the driver’s hand, but couldn’t say for sure it was a gun. And from the stand, Ethan Parrish testified that he shot six times when “[Lawrence Harris] leaned back and pointed a hand gun directly at me.” “The pistol was at Tahliek’s feet, not under the seat,” pushed defense attorney Ted Bruns in closing argument. “The question is whether Ethan had reasonable cause to do what he did.”
Taliaferro was shot after a verbal altercation at Sheetz on Route 60. It was noted and uncontested that Joey Parrish directed Taliaferro and his friends to follow him for a fight, but an explanation of the subsequent actions taken by Taliaferro and his friends was hard to pin down from testimony. Lawrence Harris told the court he and his friends briefly finished their ice cream and got in their cars to go home. He said he followed the path of the Durango through the Sheetz parking lot to talk to a friend, Ashton Bradbury. But Bradbury testified that she saw Harris and tried flagging him down to warn him about the guns in Joey’s car, but she said Harris didn’t stop. “I didn’t want a confrontation to happen when Joey had guns,” said Bradbury. At a preliminary hearing in August, Courtney Jones said the group stayed and ate ice cream for an hour after the confrontation, and only left to play basketball. But his story differed on the stand during trial and the defense honed in on the inconsistency. For reasons never made clear, Taliaferro and his friends made a U-turn and headed back east on Route 60, eventually following the path of the Durango down Dorset Road. Courtney Jones said on multiple occasions that Taliaferro stated he wanted to “go find Joey to fight,” but Lawrence Harris said he made the U-turn because one of his passengers needed to go to his grandmother’s house on Dorset Road. There were also questions about the manner in which Harris’ Saturn passed the Durango, now parked on Dorset Road. During the trial, Harris and Jones said they slowed to about 35 mph as they passed the Parrish cousins, but at an August hearing, Courtney Jones said they slowed to a “creep.” When pushed at trial, he conceded that they passed at a very slow roll. Stephanie Reynolds confirmed under defense cross examination that the Saturn passed behind the Durango at a slow roll, just faster than a walk, she said. The detail may seem small, but it makes up the fabric of evidence the jury had to confront. There were inconsistencies in defense testimony also, but the jury seemed swayed by Ethan Parrish’s testimony. He said he had in fact retrieved and loaded the MAK 90 before finding out the other boys were known to carry guns. And Parrish refuted Reynold’s claim that he tried exiting the vehicle at Sheetz with a gun. But it appeared the jury gave Ethan Parrish’s testimony more weight than they did the often stumbling accounts of Commonwealth’s witnesses. And after four days and layers of testimony and evidence, the jury was asked to render a decision with unwavering obedience to specific instructions handed down by the court (see box, below). And so the jury rattled past second degree murder (murder in the absence of premeditation) and past voluntary manslaughter (a killing in the absence of malice) and settled on involuntary manslaughter, finding the Commonwealth failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that “the killing resulted from an intentional act committed in the heat of passion,” but that the Commonwealth did prove a killing happened. That killing, they decided, though unintended, “was the direct result of an unlawful, but not felonious, act, accompanied by carelessness so gross and wanton and culpable as to show callous disregard for human life.” |
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Bornhere of Powhatan, VA
Apr. 5, 2009, 03:11 PM
While leisurely reading my Powhatan Today, I came across the letter to the Editor, from Mr. R. Vaughan, President of the Powhatan Chapter of the NAACP. Amazing… Mr. Vaughan, how can you possibly compare the Virginia Beach case, in which 2 black men robbed someone, stole their Jeep, evaded police, recklessly endangered other lives by driving over a median into oncoming traffic, driving on suspended licenses, fleeing from police and then kicking and punching a police dog? Now, Mr. Vaughan, since I’m not sure if you have ANY knowledge of the law, but let me enlighten you just a little bit, if you are open to any kind of education. Injuring a police dog is the SAME thing as injuring a police officer. Police dogs are members of law enforcement, and are treated as such by the law. In addition, this individual was convicted on NUMEROUS other charges—some felonies. And Mr. Vaughan equates this as the same as the Taliaferro incident? There is NO comparison, absolutely NONE. This individual in Virginia Beach got off pretty easily, in my opinion, with all the charges he was convicted of. This just further proves my theory that Mr. Vaughan and the NAACP as a whole is nothing but a racist hate group. And it further proves the “woe is me” attitude that the NAACP fosters is alive and well…All the muck-raking the NAACP does is not productive, but only fosters the impression that the world owes the black man. No one owes them a thing. What you get in this world, you should earn, not be given just because something happened 150 years ago. And you shouldn’t be given preferential treatment because you yell the loudest, because of some perceived slight. It’s people like Mr. Vaughan that make my teeth grind, because he’s not only ill-informed and ignorant, he’s trying to spread the poison. He can’t let things lie..Well, Mr. Vaughan, you stir the pot, you smell the stink. The incident that happened with those boys was a sad lack of judgment on both parties. Mr. Taliaferro was no saint, even though he’s being portrayed as Mr. Wonderful. Nor was Joey Parrish, but there was long-standing history between them. This was not a race crime, unless you consider the time Mr. Taliaferro’s gang attacked those 2 white boys, nearly killing the one and leaving him with permanent brain damage. Did anyone march on that??? Did anyone wail and call in a White Rights Group? No..they didn’t… The NAACP can’t stand too much scrutiny. They are as much a hate group as the KKK. chesterfieldst of chesterfield
Apr. 5, 2009, 02:55 PM
Let me say that I got the answer about a second gun being at the scene… It is NOT true unless it was in the SUV that left and came back. patient observer of powhatan
Apr. 5, 2009, 11:31 AM
i have been following these bolgs continously. e of ptown
Apr. 5, 2009, 08:38 AM
ooh let me guess ptowngirl- your friend and brother were innocent and NOT starting arguments during these confrontations u are speaking of?u sound so dumb.and everyone already knows by the way u r defending ethan joey n stephanie that u were friends with them..u keep telling people to GET OVER IT, then y dont u and stop commenting? That would be appreciated.also bb, sounds to me like you might be one of the ones charged in accessory after the fact & obstruction of justice, bennett r u? Tom
Apr. 4, 2009, 06:31 PM
@Voice of Reason - My intent is to be fair to both sides and to understand the facts. You said ‘But it is also no secret that more than one of the kids in the other cars were known to be drug dealers so who is to say they were not doing a little something thereself. ‘ then you said ‘How dare you make such accusations when you have no idea who I am.’ Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? That’s all I’m saying. My apologies to you if I offended, for the record what I said about ‘Voice of Reason’ has no truth whatsoever. And no I don’t know for a fact that what you say is not true. Some have said I am presumptuous in that regard, rather I would suggest someone would be naive to believe what they read here unless the person offering that information can support it. voice of reason
Apr. 4, 2009, 01:30 PM
Oh I see you are playing mind games. Do you know for a fact that my statements are not true or are you just not wanting the truth to come out. Where do you get your information? I am not in the habit of telling lies. I am a firm believer in the the fact that “all liars will have their place in the lake of fire”. I am not trying to cause an uproar here but I don’t understand why everyone can drag the Parrish boys and their family through the mud but nobody wants a little light shed on the whole picture of what really happened on June 24, 2008. Don’t get me wrong I am not defending Ethan and Joeys actions I would just like for all facts to come out to give a clearer picture. None of these kids were innocent that day. Tahliek and his friends were on the road to destruction with their kind of behavior. That is not something to be covered up. We have a real problem in this community with drugs, gangs, and kids carrying guns. Why can’t people see this. That’s all i am saying. All parties involved that day needed a change of heart. I am sorry if I have offended you and maybe should not have been so hasty to respond to your accusations but I am a person of honor and really didn’t appreciate someone saying something so horrible about me. Tom
Apr. 4, 2009, 01:10 PM
Thank you for making my point ‘Voice of Reason’. Of course I nor anyone else will believe what I wrote about you. That’s why YOU shouldn’t make allegations regarding other people. Don’t you think the people YOU are talking smack about would feel the same as your response to my BS? If not I say you’re a hypocrite. I’m not singling you out, many people on this blog have done the same thing. They take what other people say as fact when there is absolutely nothing to back up what they say. voice of reason
Apr. 4, 2009, 12:24 PM
Tom, wow I didn’t know you knew so much about me. When I first started reading your post I thought you were a man of reason and only wanted to find out the truth. Well I guess your true colors just showed through. I don’t know who you think I am but I don’t have the time nor the money to run to the doctor and pharmacy seeking prescription drugs. And as far as approaching little boys at the bus, well that’s just sick. What was I supposedly approaching them about? Please enlighten me. For your information my children are much older than “little boys” and my children were driven to school. I didn’t sit at the bus stop waiting to approach little boys. Who is it that you think I am? How dare you make such accusations when you have no idea who I am. curious
Apr. 3, 2009, 09:26 PM
bb I think thier to the story also.Something isn’t quite right.so tell us what you no. BB of ptown
Apr. 3, 2009, 08:35 PM
i happen to know a lot of TRUE facts in the case…1 of talieks friends that was riding along IS a drug dealer if not more of them. i truly beleive they had much to hide after the murder occured. i have no doubt that they stashed weed and a gun at least. ethan parrish had no prior knowledge of the on going fued with his cousin and taliek and felt threatened by the two cars full of people following him slowly down the road. if I, U or a cop saw a gun flashed at me i would not take the time 2 consider if it was a real gun or not i would react 2 protect myself. there is a lot more 2 the story then people no. i knew EVERY person involved and it is a tragedy 4 all!every1 lost! god beleives in forgiveness. the drama in powhatan has 2 stop! if people think its so racist here then move! i did i couldn’t take the drama. the media is having a feild day with this ..in all reality it is OVER! the jury was choosen by BOTH SIDES! each choose 6! so how is that unfair? it is how the united states court system works!!! maybe the trail would have would have been more cut and dry if witnesses would not have taken the stand and tried 2 change there stories all around! ethan has made peace with god and has deep regret for his actions and intends 2 take responsibility. please don’t divide powhatan county anymore. LET IT GO! Submit Your Comments Below Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. |
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