USA TODAY's Women of the Year: Meet the woman who dared to charge seven Virginia deputies with murder
Ann Cabell Baskervill is one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. The program launched in 2022 as a continuation of Women of the Century, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.
DINWIDDIE, Virginia – When a new year dawns, no one knows for sure what that year holds in store for them. Ann Cabell Baskervill was no exception.
The Dinwiddie County commonwealth’s attorney had just gone through likely the roughest stretch of her 43-year-old life in 2022. A fall inside her condominium that April left her with a brain injury so severe that not only was she forced to take medical leave for three months but also, she was forced to temporarily hand over her license to practice law. Suddenly, her world was almost as scrambled as the thoughts that ran through her head during her recovery.
Baskervill used that time to reflect on her future. Did she want to continue being a lawyer like her parents and grandfather? Or was that fall and subsequent injury a "wake-up call" for her to pursue something new, something far different than criminal prosecution?
Ultimately, she decided that she would like to study abroad, probably in the arena of diplomacy and international politics – even though she shudders at the thought of the word “politics.” She applied to L’Institut des Études Politiques in Paris, a world-renowned international university whose past graduates include current French President Emmanuel Macron and former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Later that year, Baskervill was medically cleared to return to work. On March 4, 2023, she got her acceptance letter to L’Institut. Two days after that, she got handed probably the most high-profile criminal case in the county’s judicial history. Twenty-eight-year-old Irvo Noel Otieno of Henrico County suffocated to death beneath the mass of seven deputies and three security guards at Central State Hospital, a Virginia-run mental hospital just over the line from the city of Petersburg in Dinwiddie. The scene had been captured on the hospital’s surveillance system – a video that "made my jaw drop,” Baskervill recalls – and though she knew in the back of her mind that she would likely not be there to completely prosecute the case, she also knew she had to find justice for the victim.
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“I’m a firm supporter of law enforcement, and part of that support is showing that law-enforcement officers need to be held accountable,” Baskervill said.
Using a “criminal information” process available to prosecutors but not that well-known among the public, Baskervill secured warrants for the seven deputies and three guards through the court that circumvents the traditional use of magistrates. All 10 were arrested on charges of second-degree murder, and while charges have since been dropped against two of the security guards, the trials for the remaining defendants are set to begin in June and run through the rest of 2024.
The case has drawn widespread media attention for similarities in earlier instances where Black people died while in police custody, most notably the George Floyd case in 2020. All eyes will be on the Circuit Court in this urban-rural mixed county that adjoins Petersburg in central Virginia to see how justice plays out.
Among those watching will be Baskervill, who resigned in June 2023 after all the preliminary hearings were conducted and the tables set for their trials.
Because she laid the groundwork for this history-making, possibly precedent-setting commonwealth’s case, Ann Cabell Baskervill is Virginia’s honoree for 2024 USA TODAY Women of the Year. We spoke with her at her parents’ Dinwiddie County home while she was on holiday break from her foreign studies. She reflected on her career, the highs and the lows, her influencers, and the mantra she follows in both her life and her work.
Who paved the way for you to become commonwealth’s attorney?
"Lisa Caruso. She had been my predecessor, and she was moving to northern Virginia, and resigned. I was a prosecutor in the city of Richmond at the time and was getting really great experience there. I thought it would be a good fit.”
Had you decided at that time to stay at the prosecutorial table, or did you ever want to move to the defense table?
“From the time I left Richmond until the time I started as Dinwiddie C.A., I spent a year doing defense work, and that was because I had no experience in rural jurisdictions. In Richmond, we had five circuit courts going on every day, so docketing and scheduling was a very different matter. I didn’t know what it would be like in a rural setting, but I knew it would be different, and I didn’t want to come into Dinwiddie County without some kind of working knowledge about the daily rhythms of more rural courts.”
Do you feel like you’ve paved the way for anybody?
“I hope so. I certainly hope so.”
What’s been your proudest moment as prosecutor?
“Staying kind and human. That was always really important ... having empathy and not getting really angry. Maintaining that world view is what I’m proudest of because it helps me to be as fair as possible and really seek justice without any sort of agenda. I really do think about individuals and community, and I try to do that with kindness.”
What’s been your lowest moment?
“The moment when I felt the lowest was in January of 2019. [A man] had been charged with murder, and we direct-indicted him for first-degree murder, and it was set for trial. It could not go to trial at that time for a number of reasons. One, he hadn’t been evaluated for his competency to stand trial. I didn’t necessarily doubt that he was competent to stand trial, but I had a sense that he ought to be evaluated in order for us to proceed in a way that would have been legitimate and fair.
“That did not happen, so I needed for it to happen for me ethically. His attorneys were not going to do it. Meanwhile I had evidence that [the victim] had been abducted ... not kidnapped in the sense you would think about it, but taken into the woods at least, and we didn’t know what had happened to her. The statute for capital murder had said you commit murder with the intent to defile. She had been defiled by maggots that had eaten her face, and I thought that counted as defilement. The statute had only been previously interpreted as going for sex issues. I did get some criticism from defense attorneys for bringing that up. In the interim, Norfolk had filed a similar case involving defilement by bugs, so I wasn’t wrong about that. I wanted to charge him with capital murder [which did not happen].
“The only thing I would have done differently is that I would have asked the court to evaluate his competency, which I could have done by statute. And after that, I did do it in other cases because strategically, that would have been the better thing to do. That being said, I don’t know if the judge would have granted it because it’s rare for a prosecutor to ask for that. I would have been subjecting myself to the claim that I would have been acting out of vindictiveness, which I certainly wasn’t. So, in the drama of all that, the defense attorney called me a ‘textbook vindictive prosecutor,’ and that became the headline the next day.”
What is Ann Cabell Baskervill’s definition of “courage?”
“Being honest with yourself and the world, and doing what you know is right. But I would preface knowing what you do is right by saying ‘You need to think about what is right. You can’t take that for granted.’ You really have to think about what is doing the right thing and then do it against all odds. But with empathy, with honesty and with as much confidence as you can summon up in the moment.
Is there a guiding principle or mantra you tell yourself?
“Hopefully, three principles: curiosity courage and integrity. For me, where they all end up is justice. It’s an ongoing process. It’s not like arriving at a destination and you’re there. Justice, you have to fight for every single day.”
Who do you look up to?
“I’m so blessed. My mom [a retired circuit court judge], absolutely. She always did the right thing, even when it wasn’t easy. She never took it for granted, and she always did the right thing.”
How do you overcome adversity?
“Faith. Praying and having faith. I’m on top of the world now. I live in Paris, and I’m studying a fascinating topic at the best institution in the world for that. Eighteen months ago, I really thought my life was over. I had sustained a brain injury, and I tried to keep working because I thought that was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, with your brain, that’s the worst thing you could do. I made it worse by continuing to work to the point where my body just stopped functioning, my brain just stopped functioning. It didn’t need to be that bad, but because I was working to overcome it, I made it worse. I just had to take a medical leave; that wasn’t an option. When I took my medical leave, I was sorta kicked out of my job and my [law]license was pulled. Everything was just awful in the world.
“I turned that into 'Now, I’m going to rebuild me.' If I can’t have what I have now, what else would I want? My dad said don’t run away from something, run to something. So, I thought if I were not commonwealth’s attorney for Dinwiddie County, what would I be? I realized I wanted to go back to school and study international affairs, and I would like to live in Paris. I had to open myself up to a possibility that I would not have otherwise.”
What would you say to your younger self? What advice would you give to 22-year-old law student Ann Cabell Baskervill?
“Don’t be afraid to fail. A lot of high achievers and anyone who wants to do the right thing, you worry about not doing it and you kind of worry about messing up your career or looking bad. It turns out that any of those things can happen, and it will be OK. You really become better from adversity, from losses. I’ve lost plenty of cases in court, and the 22-year-old me would have thought, ‘Oh my gosh. The world’s gonna stop turning.’ But the world does keep turning, and you have to use that. Use it to make it better for the next trial you have.
“Moving to Paris, that took some courage to give up everything and do something like I did not know where I was going to live. I didn’t know what the school was going to look like. But I wasn’t afraid to fail. I knew what failure looked like, and if it would look like coming back home, that’s fine. When I look back at the risks I was taking, I’m so grateful I took them.”
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Prosecutor Ann Baskervill says courage is doing what you know is right
