coverstory

March 2009

Case Closed
Staunton Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Robertson puts two pieces of local theater behind him.

by Perry Neel/skepticume@comcast.net
photography by Jason Grogan/groganjc@gmail.com

Shakespeare aside, the biggest theater to hit Staunton recently has been of the courthouse variety. In August, a jury watched three hours and 33 minutes of dirty movies in the city’s obscenity case against a local porn shop owner and his staff. Come November and on through winter, the apparent end of a 41-year-old murder mystery played out as the High’s Ice Cream killer confessed to the crimes, implicated a deceased police officer in a cover up and then died herself. Playing his role in each was Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Robertson, a man who knows who he is and who he isn’t.

Who he is: A lifelong Democrat who has been elected nine times with minimal opposition in conservative Staunton. A champion of law and order. A protector of the state with compassion toward its offenders, especially young ones addicted to drugs. Married father of four. Native of Saint Louis, Virginian since childhood. Chess master. Hunter. Guitar picker. Cowboy movie collector. Author of two 2007 humor-laced books about his profession, “Tips and Tales: A Peek at the Criminal Law” and “More Tales from the Trenches.”

Who he isn’t: “Porn Man.”

Robertson, 66, was lampooned as such in Jim McCloskey’s News Leader editorial cartoons and mocked as worse on local blogs.  He can take the criticism - “I think it is misguided,” he says plainly - and is unshaken in his confidence.  With quiet defiance, he doesn’t care what people think of him.

He is not the white hat-wearing, slick prosecutor often portrayed on TV dramas.  He’s stubborn, sure, but not flashy. “I am charged with prosecuting the laws of the state,” he says simply. Case closed. 

“You don’t argue with people who buy their ink by the gallons,” Robertson says of his critics in the press. “Newspapers and magazines in general like to think themselves champions of the first amendment free speech.  I believe I am a champion of the first amendment, too.”

Robertson is clear that the first amendment does not protect obscenity. And in the case against Rick Krial, owner of After Hours Video, the jury agreed. Robertson argued against turning “Staunton, Virginia, into Las Vegas.” Krial and his corporation were fined a total of $2,500 and closed After Hours. Krial filed an appeal but later dropped it. He told The News Leader he spent about $150,000 on his defense.

Robertson knows that many deem obscenity a crime not worth prosecuting, if a crime at all. Even if porn is victimless and consensual, he says “there are 84 pages in that Code of Virginia that deals with crimes involving morals and decency.”  His job, he says, was and is to enforce the code. Simple as that.

“High profile cases are both draining and exhilarating,” Robertson says of the recent excitement.  “Your adrenalin gets flowing during big trials, enabling you to do your best. You really want to do well for the victims and their families, and you want to make the culprits pay for what they have done.  When it is over, you lay awake at night thinking about how you could have said this or that better, or why you didn’t think of a particular argument that you should have made.  In the end though, if you believe in your heart that you have done your part to the best of your ability, then you have to understand that judges and juries are part of the chain too.  They have much to say in determining outcomes.  Just do the best you can.”

 

…

 

Robertson has been a local prosecutor since 1971 when he went to work as an Augusta County assistant commonwealth’s attorney.  This November, he seeks his tenth term in the Staunton office and is unaware of any opposing candidates. “I’m not much of a politician,” he says shyly.  But he is well aware of the local political scene.  “I could never have been re-elected so many times without a lot of help from my Republican friends.”

He says he doesn’t keep statistics on his conviction rate. “Most cases end in convictions, as you might surmise, simply because the police do a good job and make my job easy. I am proud of one thing: I went 30 years before I ever had a conviction reversed on appeal.”

Robertson loves his $113,761-a-year job, which he describes as “putting the bad guys away and helping people in their hour of need.” As an undergrad at the University of Richmond, he debated all over the country and found that he liked thinking on his feet. The experience led him to study law at the University of Virginia.

A family tragedy provided the motivation. In 1962, during Robertson’s first year in college, a drunk driver killed his father. Always in the back of his mind was that if he went into law, he could do something about drunk driving.

“When I started practicing in ‘68,” he recalls, “everybody took jury trials on drunk driving cases.  Because you always get someone on the jury who’d say ‘There but for the grace of God go I’, and they’d acquit.”  Since that time many movements have converged over the issue.  Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  The use of designated drivers.  And the creation of Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Project (VASAP).  “I learned about ASAP from Indiana,” Robertson says.  He figured it could be done in Virginia so in the 1970s he traveled the state talking with judges and legislators.  His mission was to educate them on a better way to deal with drunks behind the wheel.

 ”Without getting caught and being forced to do something, [drunk drivers] don’t get around to helping themselves.”  Rather than simply locking up drunk drivers or taking away driving privileges, the point of VASAP, he says, is to help them deal with their drinking.  They get a heavy schedule of programs to attend with significant out-of-pocket expense. The purpose is to change behavior.

Robertson is convinced that VASAP has saved a lot of lives and sees it as his most significant work. “I helped write the first piece of legislation on that,” he beams. “It is one of my proudest achievements because it is a gift back to my Dad.”

Robertson also practices prosecutorial compassion toward drug addicts in Staunton’s “Drug Court,” a yearlong program structured around meetings with substance abuse counselors, probation officers and judges.  Defendants enrolled in the program must hold a job.

“We take [suspects] that are addicted to drugs [into Drug Court],” Robertson explains.  “We don’t help dealers, we just help addicts.”

“If they mess up while they are in [the program] you throw them in jail.  They agree to that at the start.”  What they get out of the deal is that they plead guilty but are not found guilty.  They end up with reduced or even dropped charges. 

“We’ve had a huge reduction in the recidivism for drug addicts,” Robertson says. “A prosecutor is beating his head against the wall if all he is trying to do is throw [addicts] in jail. It doesn’t help anybody, it doesn’t turn them around, it doesn’t make them confront what they’ve done.” 

He believes that jailing first-offender addicts is a waste of taxpayer money and does little to prevent crime. “What I’m all about is reducing the crime rate and crime prevention.  It would be a hell of a lot easier for me if these people didn’t do the same thing over and over again.”

Crime prevention needs to start early, Robertson says.  In the 1990s, he helped initiate the Blue Ridge Restorative Justice Program for juveniles in Staunton, Augusta, Waynesboro and Highland.  In Robertson’s mind, the punishment should fit the crime, which for a juvenile is trying to make him see the magnitude of his crime.  A panel of adult volunteers meets with the kid, and he or she sits down with the victim if the victim desires a meeting.  It is a face-to-face reality check.

The message, Robertson says, is “there are consequences for your actions. You are being held accountable.”  Juveniles must write a letter of apology to the victim or victims and complete community service.  If the juvenile successfully meets program requirements, charges are   reduced or dropped. Funding for the program has been cut, and Robertson is desperately hopeful that the program will not die altogether. “Start with kids,” he says, “and turn them around before they become bad adults.”

 

…

 

No doubt some would say that Robertson, with his concern for addicts and kids in trouble, is soft on crime and that the man who’s supposed to punish lawbreakers shouldn’t be working to keep them out of jail. That mindset doesn’t shake his resolve. Neither does the idea that “Porn Man” is a prude who wasted taxpayer time and money going after Rick Krial.

A porn history lesson is important for perspective, Robertson explains.  The U.S. Attorney Generals office has changed its enforcement policy over the last two decades.  Under President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno “made a policy decision to no longer go after obscenity, but to focus on child exploitation.” This was the same period of time that saw Internet pornography grow to a 12 billion dollar industry.  He also believes that the Mafia controls the porn industry.  In 2000 under President Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Obscenity Task Force was resurrected.

Add to this that the courts have consistently ruled in favor of community standards.  This is the point he emphasized in the case.  “I look at my community and what my community is all about,” he says.  Staunton had never had such a business, he argued, so it was clear that this was not what the community desired.

Robertson cites a string of other issues related to pornography: the exploitation of women, the connection to sex offenders and pedophiles and the overall message of the movies, which is unprotected sex.  There is never any depiction of venereal disease or pregnancy.  “It undermines traditional values of monogamy and family relations.”  Robertson sums it up by quoting President Obama: “The young people should have a reverence for human sexuality.” 

“And I believe that,” he adds.

Press hasn’t been as biting about Robertson’s handling of the High’s murder case, which brackets his career. When he arrived in the area in 1968, the unsolved murder was only a year old and “still the talk of the town,” he recalls. He became Staunton’s prosecutor in 1973 and over the years dealt with rumors and leads.  Then out of the blue it was resolved, but not without some hitches. The investigator hired by the families of victims Carolyn Perry and Connie Hevener obtained a confession from Sharron Smith, but did not tape it.  Police sent a wired police investigator to Smith’s nursing home room, but she wouldn’t talk. Even a preacher could not get it out of her again.  “She told him she had made her peace with God and didn’t have to make peace with anybody else,” Robertson says.

What finally worked was the law.  Police Investigator Mike King dropped Robertson’s name, promising that the prosecutor wouldn’t send Smith to jail if she confessed, which she did on Nov. 28.  The families wanted Robertson to bring her to trial, but they did not want her have to serve any time.  “That is what worked,” Robertson says.

At the Wednesday, Dec. 10, press conference announcing Smith’s arrest, Robertson said she was so sick that she might not last the weekend. But she lingered, and Robertson scheduled a Jan. 7 hearing, only to cancel it because of Smith’s health. She died on Jan. 19. Four days later Robertson was part of another press conference, one that announced Smith’s proclaimed motive (revenge for being teased because she was a lesbian) and who she said hid the gun and covered the crime: Ray Robertson’s old friend, Davie Bocock, the original lead police detective on the case.

Staunton was spellbound, though not particularly surprised after months of rumor. Robertson was left to wonder about Bocock. He is troubled that the detective is deceased and cannot defend himself.  But he clearly believes in Bocock’s guilt.

“Why would she say that if it weren’t true, that’s the nagging question,” Robertson says. And why would Bocock cover for a killer?  “In his mind there must have been some reason to do it, he continues. “A special relationship with Sharron Smith?  Maybe she had something hanging over him.”

This part of the case may still be resolved.  Robertson never thought a possible murder weapon given to police on Jan. 23 was the right gun, and ballistics proved him correct. He believes the gun is buried at a camp Bocock rented. “We’ve got some ideas and we’re working on them and that is all I can tell you,” he says with typical quiet resolve.Â