ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 1996 TAG: 9609130072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
Radford University did not violate a student's rights by kicking him out of school before his trial on criminal charges of assaulting another student, a Roanoke judge ruled Tuesday.
Chad A. Rice, who was expelled from Radford after being convicted in a university judicial hearing, had argued that a second trial in criminal court would violate his protection against double jeopardy.
Because Radford is a state-supported university with its own police department, it acted as an "arm of the government" when it punished Rice for assault - the same crime that he faces trial for in Roanoke Circuit Court, his attorney argued.
Salem lawyer and legislator Morgan Griffith asked Judge Clifford Weckstein to dismiss the criminal assault charge. The criminal charge stemmed from an altercation Rice had in the parking lot of Valley View Mall with another student who was a friend of his girlfriend's, police said.
Griffith argued that a second trial would violate Rice's double jeopardy protection under the Fifth Amendment, which holds that someone cannot be tried or punished twice for the same crime.
"The Commonwealth of Virginia has steamrolled over this young man's rights," Griffith said.
But Weckstein rejected the double jeopardy argument for two reasons: the campus judicial hearing was not a criminal proceeding, he said, and Rice's expulsion was intended more to protect the campus community than to punish him.
"Radford University, like any other university, has a right not only to sanction for conduct committed within the four corners of its campus, but to protect members of its student body against those in their midst who might cause disruption," Weckstein said.
The case was believed to be the first time in Virginia that a double jeopardy argument has been raised in connection with campus judicial hearings.
Paul Harris, vice president for student affairs at Radford, said he was pleased with Weckstein's decision. Had the judge ruled in favor of Rice, he said, it would "really have changed the course of college discipline."
Rice, who was an 18-year-old freshman at the time of the incident, was charged in January - both criminally and through the university's judicial system - with assaulting a friend of his girlfriend as the couple argued about breaking up outside of Valley View Mall. Witnesses say he brandished a knife.
Rice asked Radford administrators to postpone his hearing before a campus judicial board until his case could be heard in criminal court, Griffith said. When they refused, Rice did not enter a plea or present evidence during the campus proceeding on advice from his lawyer, who feared that anything the student said in one proceeding could be used against him in the other.
"Radford University is an arm of the government, and it brought charges against [Rice] for the exact same conduct the city did," Griffith said.
A university judicial board found Rice guilty of verbal abuse, making threats of physical abuse, and physical abuse. The board then expelled Rice, who faced similar charges on campus stemming from arguments with his girlfriend.
Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said the campus judicial hearings were different from the state's in several ways. The university does not have the power to incarcerate someone or impose fines, she said.
The school's decision to expel Rice "was a civil adjudication and not a criminal one," Anthony said.
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