Attorney accuses Augusta County judge of racism
STAUNTON — With her client already in jail after he reneged on a plea deal in an Augusta County perjury case, attorney Amina Matheny-Willard has leveled a racism accusation against the presiding judge.
The allegation made for a hearing that was tense at times last week in Augusta County Circuit Court.
The case involves Richard E. Moore, a former Nexus Services Inc. owner who is now sitting in Middle River Regional Jail. Indicted for perjury in 2020, Moore's case dragged on for four years through the pandemic and numerous continuances as he also went through eight attorneys, three of whom remain, including Matheny-Willard.
The case came to a head in April after Moore didn't uphold his end of the bargain in a plea deal that could have seen him remain a free man had he completed community service that entailed him picking up litter for 40 hours. After he didn’t bother with the litter, Moore was instead convicted of perjury and sentenced to nine months in jail.
In an opinion letter issued last August before the trial was called off, Judge Shannon Sherrill shot down a number of motions by the defense team, then consisting of Matheny-Willard, who is Black, and Terry Kilgore. Attorney Zachary Lawrence has since been brought on the case. Both Kilgore and Lawrence are white.
One of the previously denied motions had sought to subpoena nearly two dozen witnesses for a planned trial, including Tim Martin, the Augusta County Commonwealth's Attorney who prosecuted the perjury case. The motion was rebuffed in 2022. But last summer, Matheny-Willard asked Sherrill for a “formal” ruling on the earlier decision that barred most of the witnesses from the pending trial, and then she requested nearly 20 subpoenas for witnesses that had already been rejected by the court.
“It strains credulity to imagine that Defendant reasonably misunderstood” the court's earlier ruling, Sherrill wrote in his opinion letter. The judge also said he would not re-litigate previous matters in the case that were already decided by another judge.
Matheny-Willard complained the court was precluding the defense team from subpoenaing any witnesses. "This characterization is patently false," Sherrill wrote in his opinion.
Sherrill also appeared miffed last year that Matheny-Willard, out of the blue, requested a five-day trial as opposed to a planned one-day trial. The case centered around a 37-second video. Martin's office had asked for just two hours to try the case. The judge rejected the defense proposal for a week-long trial, which was eventually nixed after Moore agreed to the deal and pleaded no contest to the felony. He was initially charged after lying to a local magistrate.
Sherrill also chastised the defense team last summer for missing numerous deadlines throughout the case, and also rejected a motion to have Martin and his office disqualified from trying the case, according to his opinion.
But it was the judge's concluding comments that Matheny-Willard found offensive. In the opinion letter, he cautioned the defense, stating its motions were "dangerously close to being interposed for [an] improper purpose," in violation of Virginia code.
"Whether this is due to counsel's incompetence or disingenuousness is unclear — frankly, the Court is not certain which is a more troubling explanation," the judge wrote. Sherrill went on to state that if the commonwealth had sought sanctions, he would have given it "serious consideration."
Matheny-Willard didn't take kindly to Sherrill's opinion letter and said she crafted a motion objecting in September. But the attorney said she didn't file it because the case seemed headed for a conclusion. However, following the plea deal's collapse and Moore's jailing, last week Matheny-Willard asked Sherrill to recuse himself from the case.
"It is clear to counsel that Your Honor's reference to me as 'incompetent' is a racist and sexist trope and that the audience this dog whistle was intended for is Commonwealth Attorney Timothy Martin. Perhaps signaling that anything I file will be denied or perhaps this is a signal for what is to come during the trial, counsel is unsure," Matheny-Willard wrote in the motion.
Appearing in court last week, initially for a motion to stay, Matheny-Willard made a number of verbal motions and also broached the allegations of racism.
"Using the word 'incompetent' is a racial and sexist bias. It's a type of a micro-aggression, and it's a stereotype," Matheny-Willard said in court. The attorney told the judge she felt he couldn't give Moore a fair hearing on the motions.
When Sherrill asked Augusta County Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Alex Meador to respond to the verbal motion to recuse, Matheny-Willard objected. "This is an issue between myself and the court," she said.
The judge shot back, "It is not at all, ma'am. This is an issue between the Commonwealth of Virginia and Richard Edward Moore, and the commonwealth is a party to this case, and you can't make a motion, a substantive motion in this case, without giving the commonwealth an opportunity to respond. Ms. Meador, do you have a response?"
Meador argued there was no basis for a recusal.
Stating he takes the cannon of judicial ethics very seriously, the judge noted he didn't feel biased in the least but did want to give Matheny-Willard's arguments consideration. “You’ve, in effect, without actually using the word, you’ve accused me of being a racist," Sherrill said. "And I suppose maybe a misogynist too, you may have thrown that on there just as a good measure.”
When Sherrill told Matheny-Willard to file a written motion for his recusal, and began combing over dates to address the issue, she objected.
"Your Honor, just so the court is aware, I am noting my objection to this process ..." Matheny-Willard said before being cutoff by Sherrill.
"What process is that? Carefully considering your motion? Is that the process that is concerning?" the judge asked sarcastically.
Sherrill said the thought of actually recusing himself did occur. “And I got to tell you it’s pretty tempting, it really is," he said. "But the problem with that is, when you call me a racist, it does give me some concerns about legitimizing your allegations and I want to actually consider them more carefully.”
The final order in the case was entered April 18, giving the court little time under the state's 21-day rule to vacate, suspend or modify the sentence before the court loses jurisdiction.
"I'm not sure what to tell you, counsel," Sherrill said. "I mean, you filed a motion to stay, we came in to hear that. Before we could take that up, you filed a motion for me to recuse myself, claiming that I was biased and couldn't hear the case objectively and give your client a fair and impartial hearing. And now, I have that to resolve. My need to decide your motions isn't a basis for me — I simply can't decide all of these motions on the timeframe that you're asking me to."
Sherrill continued the hearing until June 4. However, an appeal has since been filed, most likely nixing that hearing.
Moore remains at Middle River Regional Jail in Verona. This summer in July, he and his husband, Mike Donovan, a former majority owner of Nexus Services Inc., will go on trial in Augusta County in an unrelated case where the couple is accused of stealing $426,000 from the brother of convicted Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz. Timothy Shipe, a former Nexus executive, is also charged in the case. Matheny-Willard, who was representing both Shipe and Donovan, withdrew from the case after Martin filed a motion in March to have her removed after stating she was attempting to represent the suspects and the victim in the case at the same time.
In December, Moore will face 10 federal charges of employment tax fraud along with two charges of aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return, charges that carry a maximum of 56 years behind bars. He's accused of bilking the IRS out of an estimated $1.5 million while he worked at Nexus.
According to the Augusta County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, Moore has been convicted of fraud 11 times and charged with a total of 33 felonies in Virginia, not including his current federal charges. Up until February 2022, he had 39% ownership of Nexus before transferring his interest to Donovan.
Court records show Donovan has a dozen convictions for past crimes, the last coming in 2011. The charges include grand larceny, obtaining money by false pretenses, forgery, and writing bad checks.
In April, a federal judge ruled that Donovan, Moore, and Evan Ajin, a former vice president at Nexus, pay a massive sum of $811 million in a federal lawsuit filed by three states and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which accused them of violating various state consumer protection laws. Nexus and its subsidiary, Libre by Nexus, were also defendants in the lawsuit. An appeal has been filed.
Federal court records state Nexus was sold last month for less than $5.
In February, the Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld a $500 sanction levied against Matheny-Willard, who is from Norfolk and in 2021 was trounced in a three-way primary race won by Ramin Fatehi, Norfolk's current head prosecutor. She was reprimanded for improperly filing a complaint and seeking to empanel a special grand jury through social media, the appeals court said, after announcing her candidacy for another run in 2025. The appeals court said her complaint appeared to be an attempt to gain political publicity by way of the judicial system.
Brad Zinn is the cops, courts and breaking news reporter at The News Leader. Have a news tip? Or something that needs investigating? You can email reporter Brad Zinn (he/him) at bzinn@newsleader.com. You can also follow him on X (formerly Twitter).
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Attorney accuses Augusta County judge of racism
