A couple of Cville updates. One of the 4 RAM (Rise Above Movement) defendants pleaded guilty to 1 count of conspiracy to riot in fed court here yesterday, and they expect another guilty plea this week, which will make 3 of the 4. Not sure what kind of sentence they'll be looking at.
And as expected, our city circuit judge has at long last issued his decision in the Lee and Jackson statues case, and it was what we all expected. This is the suit where a group of concerned citizens sued the city after council voted to move those 2 civil war statues in contravention of a state law that provides localities can't remove war memorials from a list of enumerated wars (VA Code sec. 15.1-1812 if you're interested). The judge found for the plaintiffs saying that it was pretty obvious that the 2 statues in question are indeed war memorials, so the city is prevented from removing them. It is widely believed that our now former city attorney advised our council that they had no legal authority to vote to remove these statues, however 3 of the 5 voted to do so anyway. (This was the issue that got Jason Kessler and his white supremacist buds staging protests at the monuments and showing up at city council sessions to get into screaming matches.) The judge has not yet decided the issue as to whether the individual city councilors can be held liable for money damages for their contravention of the law (which is the issue we're most interested in).
