After four days of wrenching and often conflicting testimony, an Albemarle County jury needed just 80 minutes Friday to declare Thomas Forbes not guilty of all charges related to the June 23 shooting that left his cousin Krystal Dudley blind and partially paralyzed.
Forbes, a 62-year-old Scottsville-area resident, had been charged with reckless handling of a firearm, the use of a firearm in commission of a felony and aggravated malicious wounding. But the jury appeared to agree with defense attorney Scott Goodman that what happened to 37-year-old Dudley was an accident.
Footage from police body cameras likely proved pivotal, as both of the prosecution’s lead witnesses, who testified that Forbes insistently pointed his gun at Dudley, gave different accounts of the shooting to arriving officers.
Dudley’s boyfriend Travis Lambert and his mother Melissa Lambert were heard on the footage conceding Dudley’s role.
"Krystal went to move the gun from his hand," the mother told an officer.
"Krystal tried to swat the gun from his hand," the boyfriend said.
"That’s an important detail," Goodman told the eight men and four women who decided the case after four days of evidence in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
In his closing statement, Goodman said his client pulled out his gun only because he felt Travis Lambert might attack him. Dudley’s boyfriend lied to the court when he recounted that Forbes said Dudley "f’ing deserved it" after she was shot, according to Goodman.
"That’s a nasty statement. That’s a vile statement," said Goodman. "He’s making that up to make Mr. Forbes look as bad as he possibly can."
Waiving his Miranda rights, Forbes spoke extensively with police at the scene of the shooting in the immediate aftermath.
"Nobody deserved that," Forbes could be heard saying on the police’s bodycam footage.
A .38-caliber bullet tore into Dudley’s left eye and exited near her right eye, leaving her permanently disabled with blindness, brain damage, facial paralysis and difficulty walking. Dudley wasn’t called to testify because, according to an audiotape of her now-unsteady voice played in court, she could recall nothing of the incident other than arriving at the scene.
That scene was a residential property in the 3200 block of Boonesville Road in the western reaches of Albemarle County. Formerly the home of the late James MacAuthur "Big Boy" Shifflett, who died in 2022 without a legal will, the property eventually became two-thirds owned by Forbes and his wife — an ownership that Dudley disputed.
Trial testimony indicated that Forbes attempted to visit when Dudley wasn’t there but that Dudley’s mother, living there as an elderly man’s caretaker, quietly summoned her daughter after Forbes knocked on the door around 7:45 that fateful morning. Dudley and Lambert rushed over in their bedclothes, according to testimony and video evidence.
Forbes is no stranger to dangerous gunfire. Court records indicate that he was involved in something resembling a duel with a romantic rival at the Charlottesville Livestock Market 35 years ago. The February 1989 incident injured neither of the two men, but a friend of Forbes’ opponent was struck in the crossfire. Portraying himself as an ambush victim, Forbes received a suspended sentence on an unlawful wounding plea. Eleven years ago, Forbes saw his gun rights restored.
Testimony and photographic evidence showed Forbes routinely carried a gun on his 5-foot-4 frame. He testified that both people advancing on him in expletive-laden rage on June 23, Dudley and Lambert, were larger and stronger than he.
Prosecutor Susan Baumgartner hinted in her closing statement that the roughly 30 minutes that elapsed before police arrived would have given Forbes time not only to solidify his story but also to break his glasses, rip his T-shirt, tinker with his gun and maybe even create some bruises.
Goodman, the defense attorney, used much of his closing statement to portray both of the prosecution’s eyewitnesses as unreliable.
He held up a bruised and black-eyed image of Forbes’ wife, Deborah, who Dudley wounded before attacking Forbes, according to the testimony of both Mr. and Mrs. Forbes. Goodman expressed disgust that Lambert’s mother testified that she never saw Dudley punching Deborah Forbes.
"She didn’t see this?" Goodman asked as he pressed the graphic photograph toward the jury.
After the verdict, as darkness fell on Court Square in downtown Charlottesville, tears streamed down the face of Tonya Payne, one of of Forbes’ three daughters.
"This has been a very tough six months on our family," Payne told The Daily Progress. "And we’re just so thankful that the truth came out today."
"We are going home," she continued. "We want to hug our dad. We want to cry together. We want to get our life back together. We want to be a family for Christmas."
Dudley’s family declined to comment to The Daily Progress.
During the trial, Thomas Forbes betrayed little emotion other than when he spoke about Dudley’s injuries.
"Every day I pray for her," he said from the stand as he reached for a tissue.
Earlier, he was asked about Dudley’s demeanor.
"I love all my family," he said, "but some of them you got to love from a distance."
Source: www.dailyprogress.com