The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Jim Hingeley, AlbCo Commonwealth's Attorney; Question & Answer: UVA Football Triple Murder

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Jim Hingeley, AlbCo Commonwealth’s Attorney Question & Answer: UVA Football Triple Murder UVA Killer’s Motive? Killer’s Connection To Victims? Why Did UVA Delay Murder Investigation Report? Did UVA Use Albemarle To Delay Report Release? Why Was Fugitive Nyeem Hill Allowed Out Of Jail? Pending Jailhouse Brawl Charge – Was Hill Notified? Commonwealth Attorney + Schools + Guns + Crime Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley joined me live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Welcome to the I Love Seville show. My name is Jerry Miller. Good Wednesday afternoon to you. Thank you kindly for joining us on the program. I've been looking forward to today's interview and today's show for some weeks now as Jim Hingley is in the studio. I think it's his third time on the I Love Seville show today. And there's certainly a lot of is in the studio. I think it's his third time on the I Love Seaville show today and there's certainly a lot of news in the in the cycle that that we're going to discuss today with with Mr. Jim Hingley. We'll talk about some infrastructure as it applies to courts. Approaching a grand opening and what I hope is a very celebrated ribbon cutting. We'll start with that topic

to lead the show. And then we'll take some questions from the viewers and listeners. I have almost two dozen questions that have been sent in since we've been promoting that Jim Hingley is going to be on today's program. You, the viewer and listener, can help shape the discussion by offering your perspective on any of the social media channels you're watching upon. It airs on every single one of them and it's archived on every single one of them as well. Judah Wickhauer is the director and producer behind the show. I thank him for keeping us on air and I want to thank one of our proud partners Judah and Charlottesville Sanitary Supply.

The Vermillion family has been running this business for more than 60 years. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen. It's an institution, 60 plus years, on East High Street and online at CharlottesvilleSanitarySupply.com. John and Andrew Vermillion, absolutely fantastic people. So without further ado, Judah, if we can go to the studio camera and then a two shot and welcome Jim Hinchley to the show. A man we have monikered as the top three sharpest dressed individuals in the Charlottesville area

and I think you're looking the part Jim. Your fit looks really good today. Fresh glasses, nice looking tie, nice looking blazer. My friend, good afternoon to you. Well, good afternoon. Thanks for inviting me on the show. Absolutely. It's absolutely our pleasure for inviting me on the show. Absolutely. It's absolutely our pleasure to have you on the show. Why don't we start with some fantastic news. I was taken aback when you let me know it was May that the new courts were set to open. That's right around the corner.

It is. About two months from now, the new combined courts facility is going to open up. I'm sure most people who've traveled in the Court Square area have seen the construction. It's been going on for quite a while. But we are just excited, all of us in the local justice system are excited about this new facility coming online. And for those people who may not be familiar with what exactly it's going to be, let me just give a brief description. This is a combined courts facility

and it's the general district court of both Albemarle County and Charlottesville. So they will both be, the operations of both courts will be combined in one facility. And there are just an enormous number of efficiencies that come from colocation. And this is a big step forward for the local justice system to have this facility and to have it come online,

as I say, in about two months. A couple of things that I'd like to mention in connection with that are that first, this represents a very long process, as you would imagine, of cooperation between the city and county to make this happen. And it was not easy, and it was never guaranteed that it was going to happen as much as it was a great idea. And so I want to take my hat off to both the city

and county governing bodies for seeing this project through to completion as a real asset for our community. And then secondly, what I'd like to mention is an offshoot of that is that the Albemarle General District Court is the busiest court in our local court system, city, county, federal, you name it, more people go through the general district court of Albemarle County than any other court that we have in our local justice system. And keeping the Albemarle County general district court downtown

in Court Square is something that is going to continue to contribute in a significant way to the vitality of downtown. And I really appreciate that too. That's one offshoot of this project, offshoot of this project, excuse me, because Albemarle County could very well have just taken that court and relocated it somewhere fairly distant from downtown.

So that's a real plus. Yeah, so a lot to unpack here, and he described it very well here. This was common ground between Albemarle County and the Charlottesville city. Two local governments, neighbors, finding common ground, keeping the courts together. At one time, the politics of this project included moving the Alamoro piece to potentially 29 northern Alamoro County as what was, you know, speculated to be or chattered to be an economic driver, a driver of economic stimulus. Your colleagues, folks in that work in courts and the justice system said, look, we need to have these

together here. We need to have these together because the folks that are going to be most impacted by splitting them are two distinct groups. They're Jim and attorneys and folks that work in both courts and back-to-back time slots or morning and afternoon. And I think most importantly is probably those that are on the margin that may not have transportation of their own or may not have the sophistication to know where one court is and where the other is. And if they go north of town and they don't go downtown and they miss their appointment,

then they have to deal with the ramifications of missing time in front of a judge, if you may. I never saw the value of courts being an economic driver. I just don't see how moving courts to somewhere in Alamoro is going to encourage shopping or spending or food and beverage. And keeping them downtown, from my standpoint, as someone who's an evangelist of downtown, is absolutely amazing because of the foot traffic it creates around the mall. Anyone who spends any time like you do on downtown Charlottesville is going to see a

boatload of people walking around the downtown mall, having lunch around the mall, in between appointments. Well, all of that's, those are good observations. I just would add one thing about the co-location of the courts. It really represents a good use of taxpayer resources. When we have these two courts together, we can use both judges. Now, one's courts a Charlottesville court and one court's an Albemarle court. People understand that, but the judges are 16th judicial district judges.

So here's what can happen. General district court dockets are awfully hard to predict how long they're going to go. Sometimes they take a lot longer than you expect because cases get complicated. Sometimes they move faster than you expect because, you know, their plea agreements or their need for continuances or so on. But what we can do with co-located courts is balance the workload so that if one court is running long

and has a lot of cases to go and a long time to finish and the other court finishes early because their their docket was fast then the cases from the one court that's still going can be shuttled over some of the cases can be shuttled over to the other court and so it's a way of balancing the workload and it's as I say I think it's a it's a wise use of taxpayer resources because we're mining the capacity of a judge to step in and assist in a court, which that judge could

not do if the courts were located far apart. Viewers and listeners watching the program, Rob Neal, hello, James Watson. Thank you for watching the program. Vanessa Parkhill in Earleysville is watching the show. Neal hello James Watson thank you for watching the program Vanessa Park Hill and Earliesville is watching the show happy birthday to Vanessa Park Hill counselor Lloyd snook thank you for watching the program viewers and listeners like and share the show we have elected officials from Nelson Charlottesville Alvaro and Greene County on the show and we have a radio station

and a newspaper watching us over here. What happens to the old courts? Well, that's a good question. I don't know what's going to happen to the Charlottesville General District Court. I can only guess, but you know where it's located. It's in City Hall. I expect that City Hall will probably find a way

to use that space. Now, here's what's going to happen in Albemarle County and that is that this combined courts facility is phase one of a two-phase project. So this is the relocation of Albemarle General District Court to the combined courts facility. Phase two is the renovation of the circuit court building. So in phase two, the old Albemarle General District Court Room is going to be repurposed as a circuit courtroom. And I don't know all the details of phase two because

I'm not involved in phase two, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the existing court building to again to repurpose the general district courtroom into the circuit courtroom. And then I think the existing circuit courtroom, the old circuit court is going to be an auxiliary courtroom, so I believe it will still be in use. And then the clerk's office is going to expand into other parts of the building that have opened up by the relocation

of the general district court. And including the Commonwealth's attorney's office, which is now in that building, we are going to the combined court's facility. Our office will be the Levy Opera House. So there's a lot of work that's coming in phase two. And finally, I want to say something that I just found out actually.

The combined courts facility is Charlottesville and Albemarle General District Courts. But when the facility opens, Charlottesville will still remain where it is now temporarily because the Albemarle Circuit Court is going to move to the new combined courts facility temporarily while the work is being done in the old court building. So the general district courts will still be a part for however long it takes for phase two of this project to be completed.

And the combined courts facility will be entirely albumoral at the beginning, albumoral circuit and albumoral general district. Very nice. Let's get some good information right there for the viewers and listeners. Another very important item out of the notebook, how about the announcement as it pertains to Jordan McKay?

Well, I'm happy you brought that up. Jordan McKay is a new assistant Commonwealth attorney in my office. He's going to start on March 24th. And this is a vacant position that we're filling. We had another assistant who has retired. And so I took the opportunity of having a vacant position to reorganize the assignment for that new person, for Jordan, to create a position that has a focus on gun violence

prosecutions and gun violence prevention. And of course, gun violence in our community is something that I know you've talked a lot about on this show, and everyone in this community is concerned about gun violence. So I saw an opportunity with a new person coming into my office to put a real focus on that. And these are functions, prosecutions, and work

that we're already doing. But by combining all of these into one position, I'm hoping that there'll be a gain in terms of one person having, over time, getting the full picture of what is happening and being in a position to maybe work harder and have more ideas about strategies that we can employ to deal with this very serious problem that we have in our community. So the first part of this was the reorganization of a position to consolidate in one place all of the various functions that relate to gun violence and gun violence prevention.

The second thing was that Jordan is really an ideal person to fill this role because he's currently serving as an Assistant United States Attorney here in Charlottesville. And so in that position that he currently is in as Assistant United States Attorney, he has worked very closely with our federal law enforcement partners. So he brings that aspect into this new position in our office,

that he has these long-standing connections with federal law enforcement. So we all have to work together to solve this problem, local authorities, state police, UVA police, federal law enforcement. So this is a way of bringing that all together in my office and importing into my office those connections with the federal law enforcement agency. So I'm really happy about this. We're happy as well.

We applaud you for that move. It seems, and it's unfortunate to say this, a conversation I have with my wife all the time, it seems as if gun violence has really consumed much of the community of late. Certainly post-COVID, it's become almost, lack of better phrase, a catchphrase for this community with gun violence. And we've seen this in Crozet. We saw this on grounds at University of Virginia.

We saw it with a man who is currently on the run from police. We saw this as it pertained to a murder in front of the Water Street parking garage in the city a month and change ago. Open-ended question to start here. Has there been more gun violence post-COVID across your desk and your office than pre-COVID? I've been in this community 25 years.

And it hasn't been since post-COVID that this has been such a consumption for so many of us in this community? Well, I would hesitate to give a definitive opinion about that because I think you really have to track things closely to be able to say that. But I will say that my impression is yes, we've seen an uptick in gun violence.

Why do we think that is? Well, again, as I said before, I think the learning about why this is happening, finding the root causes for this takes a lot of careful analysis, and I can't say that I've done that. Sure. But again, I think that going back to this new position in my office, that's something that this new position is going to focus on. And let me give you some information about work that we're doing in this community on that. We have monthly meetings of law enforcement agencies, state, local,

UVA, and federal. And the purpose of those meetings, they're called regional CompStat meetings. The purpose of those meetings is to examine statistics on gun violence and to develop strategies, cross jurisdictions strategies for combating gun violence. And so that group is a group that's already working in the community to solve this problem, and they've been working for a long time. A second group that we have, and we're very fortunate to have this funding for this project, it's called Project Safe Neighborhoods. It's run out of the U.S. Attorney's Office. And again, it brings together people

from the law enforcement community as well as other representatives of the community at large, not just law enforcement. And their focus is on violence prevention. And so that's another ongoing effort that we're fortunate to have in this community. So there's a lot of work being done. But I, and believe me, people are trying to analyze trends

and trying to come up with ideas and reasons why this is happening. But I don't have a definite answer for that. I respect that. I respect that. One of these cases that has really consumed the community is a man who's on the lam now, Naim Hill. We have a 19-year-old who's a convicted felon,

a 19-year-old who jumped out of a moving Chevy Impala while it was still in drive, crashed into a state trooper's vehicle and then a civilian's vehicle, and then he led police on, I guess, a wild goose chase for hours, and currently he is somewhere, as we're looking to track his whereabouts down. Folks in the community had this question. This is the question I got, second most prolific in nature prior to your arrival here as we promoted your interview.

How does someone like Naeem Hill get out of jail? He got in trouble as a juvenile, then is at a West Haven playground and he's live streaming himself on social media in the city with what appear to be an AR-15 and a pistol and a kid's playground. Then he is put behind bars for that and then a couple of days while he's behind bars, he gets into a jailhouse brawl, and that's in Almarra County. And that jailhouse brawl, he and a couple of other individuals hold down another inmate and break his orbital bone, his orbital bone, then he's released. I mean, help us laymen, you know, just average folks

in the community understand what happened here. Well, I'll see what I can do. There may be some limits in how far I can go in discussing this. Sure. But to start with, it's my understanding that the reason he was in jail, he was in there on a city charge. So clearly, I'm not going to be able to comment on that one way or the other. Then he was charged with offenses

as a result of conduct that occurred in the jail. And I think it was reported that there were outstanding warrants for his arrest from Alamaro County relating to those charges at the time that he was stopped. And just recently, ultimately, he was not taken into custody. He's still on the loose, so to speak. And so since those are pending charges in Albemarle County, I'm really not going to be in a position

to comment much further than that. I understand. I understand. How about a different question for you. Commonwealth attorney Joe Plantania, when Mr. Hill was in court and Mr. Plantania was on the case, he saw a sentence that was much more lengthy than the judge was willing to impose. Walk me through the dynamic of a Commonwealth Attorney's Office, and this is just general terms.

Yes, sure. General terms. Looking for a sentence that the Commonwealth Attorney's Office feels is indicative of the crime or the danger or the risk with the individual. And a judge choosing to reduce the length of time a man spends or a woman spends behind bars. The office feeling, you know, how does the office respond to that? You know, it would almost seem to me that it diminishes the effort or the work that you guys put into it. I think, you know, and this is one man's opinion here, is it Judge Worel?

Is that how I say his last name? Yes, that would be, yes. Judge Worel reducing his sentence when Commonwealth Attorney Plantania was looking for something much longer. Now we all are playing with the benefit of hindsight here in Monday morning quarterback, but that seems to be a grave error that was made. And that's just me talking here. I'll give you an open ended question. When a judge chooses to reduce sentencing on a individual that has a history of gun

crime on his rap sheet? Well, I'll respond in some respects to that specific situation, but I think your question is a little bit broader in terms of how does the system work and what happens to when Commonwealth Attorney's recommendations are revised downward by the court. But let's start first with that case, which being a city case, I don't have any knowledge about it other than what I've read in the paper, and I think you probably have accurately represented what happened. The Commonwealth's attorney made one recommendation,

the judge imposed a sentence that was different, was lower. And so what I would say is that that does not represent a failure of the system from my perspective. And the reason I say that is if it were me instead of Joe Plattania, I would go into a sentencing having a position that I had worked hard to develop, but I would know that I am not the decision maker. I'm an advocate for a point of view. The defense lawyer goes into the same sentencing proceeding with a point of view and reasons why the defense lawyer most likely is going to ask for a sentence that's lower than the one the prosecutor's

going to ask for. That's how that works, right? But I see myself and the defense lawyer as advocates and the judge as, of course, a judge. And so the final decision is up to the judge. And if the judge sees things differently from me or differently from the defense lawyer, that's fine. And what I want people to remember is it's the judge is the one who hears all of the evidence when making that decision. So in this case, Mr. Plattanea went in

with one set of information to present to the judge. The defense lawyer went in with, perhaps, additional information. That's how the system works. But the judge makes the final call and it's not correct to presume that either the defense lawyer or the prosecutor has the right answer. The right answer is what emerges, I believe,

from the process and particularly from the sentencing hearing. Remember, at the sentencing hearing, the court is focused on sentencing. We've had the trial, the person has been found guilty. So everything that happens in the sentencing proceeding is geared to giving the judge a base of information on which to make a wise and sound decision.

And so I don't ever take it amiss if I make a recommendation and the judge disagrees with me because that's that's the way the system works. Right, right. And I trust Judge Warrell. In this situation I don't know anything about that case but I trust that he did what he's supposed to do which was hear from all sides, weigh the evidence carefully and make a decision. And I trust our circuit court judges in Albemarle County just as much. I respect that. I respect that.

And in this particular case with Judge Worrell, after Mr. Hill is sentenced and goes to jail, shortly thereafter, he gets in a significant brawl in Almore County jail, in a jail in Almore County. In a lot of ways, it's part of crushing a man's skull, breaking his orbital bone. And then as he's released from jail in what the public would say is a very short time period, he then proceeds to evade and elude a state trooper in a chase over much of the area that led to him jumping at a moving vehicle in Ivy and running away from police and is somewhere.

And granted, we have the benefit of the hindsight here. Here's a question that I thought was a good one from one of the viewers and listeners. Does Mr. Hill get notified of Does Mr. Hill get notified of the pending charges against him for what happened in jail, in Amar County, with that jailhouse brawl? Is he aware of that as he's running from police, running from the state trooper, that he has this charge over his head? I don't know operationally how that would work. I don't know how close the law enforcement agent was to him.

I don't know the answer to that question. But maybe if I could just respond to something else you said. Sure. Or maybe hinted at a little bit. Sure. Is, you know, what happens when you give somebody a sentence and then it goes wrong? Somebody commits more crimes that while they're incarcerated, they, you know, run from a state trooper, they cause an accident, they may injure people, you know, what happens when somebody goes wrong? And I think you correctly use the term hindsight.

Remember in sentencing, we all do our best to come up with the right answer. The judge, the defense lawyer, the prosecutor, we all do our best, but there's no guarantees. There's nothing that can say that the sentence that we give somebody is going to take into account their future behavior. Now we try to, I mean, obviously we always look to their future behavior and one way that we try to understand what that future behavior might be like is looking at past behavior. So that's very much a part of sentencing.

But, you know, we just have to acknowledge the limitations that we have as human beings in predicting the future and setting a sentence that takes the possible future behavior into account. And so, yes, there are probably times when people are sentenced to less than we would think later on in hindsight was the right amount of time. And it works the other way too.

I've seen this happen many times, that somebody gets sentenced more than in hindsight was really necessary because they've changed and their behavior is not going to be a risk or a threat to the community in the future. So it's always a balancing act and there's always going to be hindsight, but I really do believe that we do the best we can, those of us who work in the system. I respect that. I respect that.

A lot of comments coming in, a lot of folks watching here. Viewers and listeners, let us know if you have any questions we'd like to, you'd like me to relay to Mr. Hingley here. Can we talk, so much to talk with Christopher Darnell Jones. This story has so many sad elements to it. We have three young men dead, two others injured, and emotional trauma for dozens of people if not more, if you consider the students and their parents that were that were tied to grounds during this triple murder. One thing really stuck with me as a parent

when the mother of one of the dead football players said the report read in court, five page report read in court. report read in court, five page report read in court. Can I say that's public record? It is public record. It's public record. Absolutely. So we have that report here, it's public record. She said she learned more in that five pages that were read in court than she did by reading the entire report provided to her by the University of

Virginia, which she said nearly, and this was in the media, everything was redacted. She said, in the daily progress, I just want to know what happened to my son on the day he died. And that really stuck with me as a parent. Let me start with an open-ended here. You go anywhere you like and I'll ask some questions on kind of the flip book of what's materialized with Christopher Darnall-Jones, this UVA report, we have FOIAs that have been in the media. Your office responded to the FOIA openly and honestly. What was reported in the media said

the University of Virginia did not. Anywhere you wanna go first to start and then maybe I can ask some questions. Well, it is a pretty broad topic. I'll start off and then leave room for you to ask specific questions as we go along. But first, let me put in context what the report was that you were referencing. When Christopher Darnall Jones pleaded guilty, and that was back in last November, a part of the process

for pleading guilty is for the Commonwealth's attorney to make a proffer or tell the court what the evidence is, because a court cannot accept a guilty plea if there's not evidence to support it. And of course you ask, well, why would anybody plead guilty if there was no evidence? So this is kind of a technical point, but it's an important point. The court has to review the evidence before deciding if the person pleading guilty should be allowed to do that. And so this was a proffer and we did it because this is obviously a very important and significant case.

We did the proffer in writing and it ran to five pages apparently and it was filed in the public record. So it's a public document. And so that was information and it's certainly not all of the information but it's a good solid summary of what happened. So I want people to know that's where that came from. And anybody that wants to read it

can go to the court and take a look or get a copy of it. So that's a public record. Now, the next part of your question has to do with the FOIA case. And here, I probably will have to get pretty deep in the weeds. So before doing that, is this where you want to go? Sure. I would love to get deep in the weeds. I'd like to know why it seems to the public that the University

of Virginia is not being forthright with this report. And it seems to the public that the University of Virginia is choosing to hide the report because there's elements of the report that either indicate malpractice, red flags that were not pursued or followed, and maybe some negligence. And because of that, we're asking a lot of questions. And through some reporting in the newspaper, FOIAs were done with your office, where you guys were transparent with a timeline of events when your office was asked

by the University of Virginia for a meeting. And when that same FOIA effort was done with UVA, and I believe Chief Lango's office, that email chain was not provided in the FOIA efforts about requesting a meeting. And that further raised flags of, red flags of the public, what is being hidden here? Well, I really want to dispel the notion

that UVA is hiding the report because, well, hiding the report. I can't speak to their motivation one way or the other about the actions they have taken in respect to the report, except for one thing, and that's where I have to get into the weeds. And it does concern the meeting that has been reported in the media. And so... Meeting with your office and Chief Longos?

Yeah. OK. The report was commissioned by the attorney general. And the report did not really focus on the events of that November 13th night. Those events are the events that the prosecutor is responsible for presenting in court in the prosecution. The reports that were commissioned by the Attorney General were reports to evaluate the university procedures relating

to Christopher Darnell Jones and his experience at UVA that might have contributed in some way to what happened, or might have shed light on opportunities there may have been to do things differently. I mean, everybody wishes so much that this hadn't happened. And so the report was in one respect to examine, you know, what perhaps went wrong in the lead up to the killings. The other aspect of the report, and as you may recall from media reports, there were two separate law firms

that did the separate parts of the report. The second part of the report concerned the response following the murders, the UVA's response. So, neither report was focused immediately on the crimes, but more on what happened before the crimes occurred and what happened in the response to the crimes after they occurred. Now, what happened was that the reports were filed with UVA, and when they were filed with UVA,

they were filed with the entity or organization that UVA is, but that also includes the police department. So the police department at University of Virginia had access to those reports. And here's where you got to go in the weeds, okay? And here's where you got to go in the weeds, okay? If there's anything in those reports that would be helpful to the defendant in this case, I, as the prosecutor, have a duty to turn that information over. And you might say, well, why would anything in there be relevant

to the offense if the reports are focusing on what happened before the offense and what happened after? Well, it's more complicated than that. And so there's stuff in there are beneficial to him in connection with his sentencing if he's convicted. And of course, now he's been convicted, but at the time the report was filed, we didn't know if he was going to be convicted or not because the trial or guilty plea hadn't happened. So there would be a reason to believe that some

of the contents of that report would be required to be disclosed to the defendant, okay? And it's called exculpatory evidence. So I have to do that. And the interesting thing about exculpatory evidence, and here again we're in the weeds, is it doesn't matter if I know it or not. If it's in the mind of law enforcement and I don't know

about it, I still have that duty to disclose. And so I had to take steps to get the report and to disclose it to Defense Council. And so that was done. Now, when I got the report, it became part of my criminal investigation. Even though originally the report was not intended as a criminal investigation, it was intended as an investigation of other things happening before and after the murder. So the character of the report was as a criminal investigation, information about a criminal investigation that I was required under a constitution to provide

to the defense lawyer. And so then the question became what if UVA released the report publicly after that had happened. And so I did have a meeting with UVA and the meeting that I had with them was concerning the issue of whether the release of this information publicly as opposed to the disclosure privately to defense counsel could have an impact on the criminal, the fairness of the criminal trial.

And this was a meeting called by UVA? They asked, they asked to meet me, yeah. So, and let me put this in context too. As a Commonwealth attorney, I meet with law enforcement all the time when they have questions. Not just UVA law enforcement, but Albemarle Police Department

and State Police, because they have questions that they feel like they need to discuss with a prosecutor. So it's, believe me, it's not unusual that I might meet with a law enforcement agent in relation to a criminal case. And so after the meeting, I, in the course of the meeting, we discussed the potential impact on a fair criminal trial of a public release of the report. And UVA decided, and this was their decision, they make their own decisions. And I think if you go back to the news release that followed that meeting, I made a statement, I don't know the exact wording of it, but a statement to the effect that I appreciated

UVA's concern for a fair trial in this case, which of course is my principal concern. And as a result of that concern, they decided that they were not going to release the report. Now, subsequently, the Daily Progress filed a FOIA lawsuit. And in that FOIA lawsuit, they asked for the report to be publicly disclosed. And at the near toward the conclusion of that lawsuit seeking public disclosure of the report, the defense counsel in the Jones case, Doug Ramsler and I petitioned the circuit court judge in our case, Judge Higgins, to enter a protective order

restraining the University of Virginia from releasing the report publicly because of its potential to have a negative effect on a fair trial. And so this was a position that I had, but also defense counsel had. At that time, we articulated it to the court, and the court ruled against us. Judge Higgins ruled against us, and she took the position that she did not have the authority to bind another judge in making that decision, the other judge being the judge who was

presiding in the FOIA lawsuit. So subsequent to that, I went to the FOIA lawsuit and I intervened in that lawsuit, and I made the same argument, and the judge in that lawsuit said that the report would be withheld from public disclosure. So when UVA withheld it, they withheld it initially because of their concern that it could have a negative impact on a fair trial.

And then the judge in the FOIA lawsuit agreed with that concern and said that the judge would not order them to disclose it publicly. And so that's how that all unfolded. But I want to emphasize again, as I did at the beginning of this answer, that I don't feel that UVA was in any respect motivated by anything more than a concern that we have a fair trial in this case and that we get a conviction in this case.

And of course, you can imagine the publicity that may have followed that and how that could have affected. We might have had a change of venue. We might have had jurors who were unable to sit as jurors because they'd been exposed to this publicity. There are all sorts of ways in which this could have compromised the process and why withholding it, we didn't have to deal with that. And that was a great benefit and it was a benefit ultimately to provide

us the best way of going forward in this prosecution. Do you think the University of Virginia put your office in a tough position in any situation here? No. You don't think so? No. I think the university did everything it could to assure that we would not have something that would compromise our case. Okay. Do we have a, this is a question that resonated with me with one of the viewers

and listeners. Did we have a motive at all for the killing, for the killings? Well that's something I'm not going to be able to comment on at this point. What I can say about what happened is what's already filed in court. You know, we do have a sentencing pending. Okay. How about a state of mind with Mr. Jones? All of that is, I'm limited to what I've already said on the record. And let me turn this back to our earlier discussion about what goes into sentencing. Sure. This is a case in which we have five days scheduled for sentencing.

And so the questions that you're asking, what was the motive, what was state of mind, all of those are things that are going to be developed at sentencing, or may be developed. They're going to be developed to the extent that we have information that bears on those questions, to the extent that the defendant has information that may bear on those questions. That'll be up to the defendant how much of that information is presented in court. But we are going to get to the bottom of this as much as is possible for us to do in five days of sentencing. I read the, a few times, the five page report that was read

in court that Ms. Perry referenced. Yes. And in those five pages, Christopher Jones, he didn't know who these people were. He didn't have interaction with them. There was talk of him being bullied on the football team. These players weren't on the team then. Mr. Jones was on the back of the bus. He was he was seen talking to himself, literally speaking to himself

by other folks on the bus. He was sending text messages to his siblings and a mentor that bad stuff was gonna to happen that day on the bus. It just is the behavior of a troubled man. It's just an unfortunate situation. Where does this stack up with some of the cases that you've tried and some of the, when you look back on your career, an impressive career, where does this stack up from magnitude, from the impact it's had on you, not Jim Hinschley the attorney, but Jim Hinschley the human. You know, the things you think about when you go to sleep at night or when you think

about when you leave the office. Well, I think maybe one thing I would say is a comparison to work that I have done in my career defending people who are accused of capital murder and face a death sentence. Those are the highest stakes cases when the government is seeking to take your client's life. I've had four of those cases. I've represented four people who could have gone to death row and could have been executed. And I can tell you those cases are all consuming.

And I can also say I'm very grateful that in all of those cases, my client did not receive a death sentence. those cases my client did not receive a death sentence. This case, and you know that we've abolished death sentences in Virginia. I was a very strong proponent, I've been a strong proponent my entire life, of ending the death penalty. It was done in Virginia.

And I'm really pleased with that. But let me tell you that if we hadn't abolished the death sentence and capital murder prosecutions in Virginia, this is a case that would have been a capital murder case. So this is a case that is every bit as all consuming and every bit as difficult and every bit as traumatic as a capital murder case. And so I put it in the same line with those other cases that I've been involved in.

I was involved in those cases as defense lawyer. I'm involved in this case as a prosecutor. But the impact on me personally is very similar. And you know there's a lot in the literature about prosecutors and defense lawyers dealing day in and day out with crimes like this. And the trauma is kind of vicarious trauma. And I think you're right to ask me, and to ask generally, how do people who work in this field manage that?

And I don't have any answers. I kind of put my head down and keep going because I'm inspired by the importance of the work that I'm doing to bring justice to the victims in this case or to bring justice to a defendant in the cases that I've represented defendants in death penalty cases. So part of it is a defendant in the cases that I've represented defendants in death penalty cases. So part of it is a commitment to the goal of seeing that we have justice in our community.

And that's a really important goal and I'm really privileged to be able to work for that. So that's part of what keeps me going. And I think another really important part of keeping it together in these cases is that I'm not alone. I have an amazing staff at the prosecutor's office, and I had amazing people to work with when I was defense counsel in these capital cases.

And so you lean on other people and they give you the strengths to carry on and to deal with the trauma that you're experiencing vicariously. So I would say those are the two main things is being inspired by the goal of bringing justice to the community and having people to help me as I go through it. I appreciate that answer. I got a few more questions for you here as we wind down.

How's the Commonwealth Attorney's Office look at crime as it pertains to school? It's a question I asked Commonwealth Attorney Joe Plantania and he made it clear that schools and what's going on there is tied to the schools now to a certain extent. How do you look at what's happening in schools as parents? We read about stuff seen on social media all over the country. Is it the role of the Commonwealth Attorney's Office to be involved with schools?

Is it the role of superintendent, the school system to handle in-house the trouble that's going on there? Okay, schools is a pretty big area, but it sounds like you're asking about what is law enforcement's role in, with crimes that are happening in the school. That's right. Okay. And it's complicated because there's room for a response on the part of the schools to behavior in the schools that might be criminal, but they might not want to involve law enforcement for whatever reasons. And I think in terms of my approach to this,

I believe that we need to leave room for the first response to be a response of the school authorities. And then following up on that, if the school authorities want to involve law enforcement, then yes, of course, that's our job and we need to prosecute those cases. Appreciate you, Jim Hinjley. He spent an hour with us guys today on the Isle of Seville show. Are there any items we have not covered that you'd like to cover? Any announcements? Any other details that we should discuss? And I'm very grateful for your time.

Well, thank you. And I've enjoyed being here. I do have one for your time. Well, thank you. And I've enjoyed being here. I do have one thing. Please. It's sort of related to what we've been talking about, but different in a way. And that is this is budget time.

And I know you've had some comments relating to the budgets of Charlottesville and Albemarle as they're being presented and worked on during this time. No tax increases in Charlottesville City. Albarle is there being presented and worked on during this time. No tax increases in Charlottesville City. Albemarle County, different story. Different story. That's what I want to talk about. So as you have mentioned and as people know,

Albemarle County has a proposal for a 4 cent increase on the real estate tax. And I went to the budget presentation and this is what I heard and that is that this is a dedicated 4 cent increase and 3.2 percent of this is dedicated to public safety. And so, I think when people look at the budget, that's one thing that they need

to take into account. This is not just money that's going into the general pot. This is money that at least 3.2 cents of the 4-cent increase is going to public safety. And there safety and there are some grant funded fire safety positions that are no longer funding is not going to be available and yet these positions are providing services to the community that these, that this part of the budget increase is going to cover. So it's going to cover some fire safety positions and it's also going to cover six additional police officers.

And so, and I'm an Alamo County resident. Me too, you too. Well, we're all together there. And I don't have a bit of a problem with this. And I think turning back to what we started off talking about at the beginning of the show, which is gun violence in our community, crime in our community generally, I think it's a wise investment

to increase the law enforcement officers who are available in the community to provide safety to all of our residents. I respect your position. I respect your position. Some respectful pushback here. A four cent real estate tax rate increase at a time when assessments have spiked like they have. compound spikes post-COVID year over year over year, it's challenging for folks and probably the main item I hear when we're out and about, my wife and I are a family and we get stopped with viewers and listeners, like I'm sure you get stopped all the time on your

leisure time when you're, not in the office. The top item I hear is the expensive nature of living here. And folks- I'm not gonna disagree. Yeah, and folks are just like, we're squeezing every penny. Yeah. And at a time when everything is more expensive.

And you know, I'm all for, I back the blue big time on this show, and I'm all for policing, and I'm all for infrastructure, I'm all for schools. I mean, some of these schools are having for language cut. That's a topic that a lot of parents are really concerned about. Eventually though, that if we're not careful, we're just going to have a community of just extremely wealthy, wealthy people. And that concerns me. All right. Let me do one more thing.

Please. Since you brought up schools. Please. And budget. Yeah. OK? I like this. I like this.

On March 3rd, just earlier this week, the legislature sent a bill to the governor's desk. It's Senate Bill 1370, I think. And this bill has been around before and you've talked about it before. It's a one cent increase in sales tax that communities are allowed to impose after a referendum, after a choice is made in a referendum to have this tax,

that's devoted entirely to school construction. And the governor vetoed it last year and he has until March 24th this year to veto it. And so if you want to talk about strains on our local budgets and we have strains in Charlottesville and Albemarle for school construction, as you know, then if the governor vetoes this, he's denying again the opportunity for Albemarle County and Charlottesville to impose a tax on themselves voluntarily for school construction, which if they could have that tax, would take a lot of burden off of the real estate tax. So.

would take a lot of burden off of the real estate tax. So is the governor truly denying it, or is the governor asking Alamara County to find something in its budget to take out? Because with my household budget, we have a set amount of money each month, right? And then we can say we want to go for leisure, we want to go movies, we want to go restaurants, we want to go dining. I understand that Alamaro County has set him out of money and if Governor Yonkin does veto it, which I think we both are in agreement he probably will, isn't it up to Alamaro County to find something else in its budget to shift money to school construction or capital improvement projects? Well no, they have it in their budget.

Sure. It's just that part of, I presume, part of their capital program is funded by real estate taxes. That's true. This is an opportunity to shift it in a different direction. And I'll tell you why the governor vetoed it last year, because I have his veto message right here. It's because it's a tax

increase and the governor is against tax increases. It doesn't have anything to do with what can Albemarle County find the money here or find the money there or Charlottesville. It's because the governor philosophically doesn't like tax increases and he's willing to deny Albemarle County and Charlottesville citizens the right to impose their own tax increase on themselves voluntarily, not through government action, through referendum. And I hope that the governor will be moved to give our communities this chance because I think it really does play out into likely reducing the heavy demand on the real estate tax. Do you think he's going to do it?

If past experiences any indication, I think he's going to veto it again. But we in this community have until March 24th. To petition them. To ask the governor to give us in this community the chance to decide for ourselves if we want to pay a penny more to help with school's construction. Jim, I appreciate you. I appreciate the time.

I appreciate the, you make everyone think it's refreshing. I appreciate the transparency. Thank you. Seriously, thank you. Well, thank you for having me on. I always enjoy the discussion and especially I like the pushback. You know, people can disagree and I really appreciate hearing different points

of view. So I'm always open to push back. Same, me too. Jim Hingley, guys, Commonwealth's attorney of Alamara County. Judah Wickauer, the director and producer. For those that are asking and I see it on the feed, the show will be archived in its entirety wherever you get your social media, your podcasting content, or on iloveseaville.com. And we are back in the saddle tomorrow Thursday at 1230 p.m. We're efforting Denver Riggleman through text exchange now about coming on the show to discuss the Silverback distillery sale that is in the works and what could be in the works for Mr. Riggleman himself in politics. Thank you kindly for joining us. So long everybody..