First it was two years, and then it got reduced by half.
A longtime Charlottesville resident who pleaded guilty to stabbing a friend amid a gin-fueled argument recently got his sentence lowered so he could keep his job at a local hotel.
Ricky Glenn Gatewood, 63, received the sentence reduction last month because the lower sentence was required to allow him to work while wearing an ankle monitor.
"This is the case where I learned for the first time that there is no work release at all," said presiding Judge Richard Moore.
Sitting as a substitute in Charlottesville Circuit Court for an unusual pair of sentencing hearings, Moore and other court officials bemoaned the fact that work release is no longer offered by Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
"No work release?" asked Moore at the first hearing.
"It’s very frustrating," replied prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony. "It severely limits our ability to let individuals like Mr. Gatewood get gainful employment."
According to a magistrate, Gatewood, at the time of his arrest, had recently begun working at the Forum, a Kimpton-flagged hotel on University of Virginia Grounds.
"I don’t want him to lose his job," said Gatewood’s lawyer, Anthony Martin.
"I don’t want him to lose his job either," replied Antony, the city’s deputy commonwealth’s attorney.
However, during that hearing on Oct. 22, the judge wrestled with the violence Gatewood perpetrated last year and ended up assigning a two-year sentence.
"It’s a very light sentence for what you did," said the judge.
Prior courtroom testimony showed that on March 28, 2023, Gatewood and a friend named Alvin Bruce were sharing a pint of gin in Bruce’s yard in the city’s Venable neighborhood. An argument erupted, and Gatewood went to his house a block away and then reappeared wielding a knife.
Last year at the preliminary hearing, there was a dramatic courtroom moment when Bruce lifted his shirt to reveal a series of abdominal scars, including one several inches long made by a surgeon, Bruce said, to fix internal damage that hospitalized him for several days.
"You kept arguing, and nobody backed down," said the judge. "You stabbed someone for no good reason."
Gatewood’s lawyer attempted to steer the conversation to intoxicants.
"Alcohol is a demon for him," said Martin. "And while it’s not a legal defense and never is, it is an explanation."
Even the prosecutor didn’t disagree.
"I do think this is a significant anomaly in Mr. Gatewood’s life," said Antony. "He has, since that time, made substantial changes."
The lawyers said that, since pleading guilty to malicious wounding, Gatewood has abstained from alcohol, started regularly attending church and committed himself to his job. His last criminal convictions were two assaults more than two decades ago, one in 1995 and the other in 2004.
"I do not expect," Antony said, "to see Mr. Gatewood back in this court."
And yet one week later, on Oct. 29, Gatewood was back in court. But this time it was not for an infraction but rather a quest for a lower sentence. Instead of 10 years with eight years suspended, he sought 10 years with nine years suspended to provide a net active sentence of 12 months.
In Virginia, an active sentence above 12 months puts the convict under the control of the state Department of Corrections, which could force Gatewood to remain behind bars and away from work or even sent out of Charlottesville for his two-year sentence.
The prosecutor at the second hearing, Nick Kalagian, urged the judge to stick with his original sentence, but the judge sided with the defendant.
"I’m going to modify your sentence," Moore told Gatewood, lowering the active term to 12 months. "It’s a little unusual, but that’s what we have to do."
The ruling allowed Gatewood to remain at Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail which makes extensive use of home electronic incarceration, according to the jail’s superintendent, Martin Kumer.
"Even though it’s called home electronic incarceration, the area where you can go can include your workplace," Kumer told The Daily Progress.
Home electronic incarceration involves an ankle device and a tracking service relying on the satellite-based Global Positioning System, or GPS. The work release system, by contrast, relied on manpower.
"We would release them either to their employer or family who drove them to and from work, and they they would work in the community, and at the end of their shift, they would return promptly, back to the facility," said Kumer. "We’d book them back in, put them back in the work release housing area, and they would be released the next morning to go to work."
All those intakes and outtakes not only took time but also put people into physical contact with one another. So while home electronic incarceration has existed locally since the early 1990s, Kumer said its use was minimal until the pandemic struck in early 2020.
"Our numbers went from two or three before the pandemic to over 80 on a daily basis by May of that year," Kumer said.
Even when the pandemic waned, Kumer said the benefits of home electronic incarceration convinced him to let it supplant work release.
"Logistically, both in terms of cost and man hours, home electronic incarceration is much more efficient, both for jail staff and cost to taxpayers," said Kumer. "So there’s really no need to have both programs going simultaneously."
But as Gatewood learned, it may not work for those with a sentence above 12 months.
As the judge lowered Gatewood’s sentence, he reminded him to stay out of trouble for 10 years or risk an imposition of the nine years that were suspended.
"Don’t do anything you regret," said Moore.
"No regrets at all," answered Gatewood.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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