THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 17, 1995 TAG: 9505170262
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Portsmouth courts were doubly kind to 22-year-old Nathaniel Richardson last week.
(1) He won a battle over custody of the 1-year-old child he fathered by Telisha Johnson, a young woman he is charged with murdering. In Portsmouth, Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Robert Babb ordered that the child be taken from the victim's unmarried mother and awarded to Richardson's parents.
(2) Then Babb refused to revoke Richardson's bail on the murder charge. Prosecutors sought the revocation because Richardson, while on $50,000 bond on the murder charge, was arrested May 1 with two other men in what Portsmouth police called the largest single crack-cocaine seizure in the city's history. Police valued the drugs seized at $72,000. Police said Richardson was armed. They said he was the leader of the drug gang.
As staff writer Jon Frank noted in a story Saturday, it was the fifth time in less than two months that judges decided Richardson should be given the chance to post bond so that he could stay out of jail until his trials.
Right now, Richardson is free on a $75,000 bond while awaiting preliminary hearings on three drug-felony charges connected to his May 1 arrest and the $50,000 bond for the murder charge. He is accused of shooting to death his girlfriend, who was pregnant, on March 21.
What does a person have to do to have bail revoked? It's true that Richardson, like anyone else, is presumed innocent by the justice system until proved guilty, but being caught in the presence of $72,000 worth of illegal drugs does not count, in our book, as good behavior. Richardson was charged with distributing drugs, conspiring to distribute and possession of a firearm with drugs.
At a bond-revocation hearing last week, a police detective said a police informant told her Richardson is still operating a large crack-cocaine business. The informant was not called to testify, because doing so would have revealed the person's identity.
Judge Babb refused to consider the drug-dealing allegation, because it was hearsay: The informant told the detective who told the court.
And the judge said to prosecutors, ``What you have told me today is that (Richardson) was arrested in a house with drugs, but nobody said it was (Richardson's) house. . . . I don't think I can revoke his bond based on that.''
But it doesn't matter where the drugs and defendants were seized. The search warrant named Richardson, and there he was, along with the drugs, police said. Many drug dealers reside in safe, even upscale, neighborhoods and ply their nefarious trade elsewhere.
Portsmouth Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Helivi L. Holland said the Virginia Code does not specify when bail should be revoked, though the code does say the amount of the bond ``may be increased'' when the accused ``is convicted of or arrested for a felony or a misdemeanor.''
``Mr. Richardson,'' Holland said, ``was arrested for a felony, in fact, three felonies,'' while free on bond for the murder charge.
And she said, ``If I could write the law, I would say a new felony charge would be an automatic reason for bail revocation.''
In a separate interview, Richardson's lawyer, Kenneth Melvin, responded, ``In hundreds of years of jurisprudence, no law like that has come to fruition in any state, because it flies in the face of the basic tenet we have in this country that everybody is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty.''
Melvin emphasized that the criminal charges against his client have not been proved. ``They are allegations,'' he said.
It seems clear that Richardson's rights as an American citizen are being zealously guarded, as they should be. But when Richardson is repeatedly released on bail, it is far from clear that other Americans are being protected, as they should be. This is the kind of case that leads Americans to complain about a breakdown in the criminal-justice system. by CNB