by Laurence Hammack | Feb 25, 2001 | Courts/legal issues
BIG STONE GAP — Inmate No. 276923 sits locked inside one of the concrete closets they call a visiting area at Wallens Ridge State Prison. He is wearing a burgundy jumpsuit and shackles. One hand is chained to his waist. The other cradles a telephone handset. He...
by Laurence Hammack | Feb 4, 2001 | Courts/legal issues
MARTINSVILLE — It began with seven rapes, one after another, as a 32-year-old woman struggled with her attackers in the light of a pale moon. Then seven verdicts, one after another, as the black defendants were convicted by all-white juries in a tense...
by Laurence Hammack | Dec 10, 2000 | Courts/legal issues
GRUNDY — Eight years have passed since his ashes were scattered from a mountain ridge high above the stone courthouse where he was sentenced to death. But his last words still haunt this town. “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight,” Roger...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 7, 2000 | Courts/legal issues
It was 2:30 a.m. by the time Mike Niday got home, and the beers he’d drunk with friends soon lulled him into a peaceful sleep. Two hours later, the electronic shriek of smoke alarms jolted him awake. “I got up and looked out the door and...
by Laurence Hammack | Mar 2, 1998 | Courts/legal issues
On the night of Feb. 22, outside the restaurants and nightspots of Roanoke’s City Market, Mary Arnold found her own entertainment. Arnold, a hard-drinking drifter whose life on the streets has produced more drunk-in-public arrests than can easily be counted,...
by Laurence Hammack | Nov 10, 1997 | Courts/legal issues
For longer than the Roanoke City Courthouse has stood at Church Avenue and Third Street, longer than the tenure of its most senior judge, longer than the time spent in prison by many a criminal who passed through the building, one thing has remained constant: Donald...