Five life sentences and an additional 23 years. That’s the prison term awaiting the young man who opened fire in 2022 on a bus returning to the University of Virginia from a Washington, D.C., field trip, killing three and wounding two.
The sentence, delivered Friday evening in an Albemarle County courtroom, capped a weeklong hearing offering conflicting accounts of what drove Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. to murder three unsuspecting schoolmates.
"This is the worst crime in Albemarle history," Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Richard Farley told the court. "These guys didn’t have a chance; he executed them."
Killed in the Nov. 13, 2022, attack were three popular UVa football players, Lavel "Tyler" Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry. A fourth player, Mike Hollins, was seriously injured as well as a track and field athlete Marlee Morgan.
Hollins, who testified earlier in the week, said he stayed in court throughout the remainder of the week to "connect the dots" of the case and support Happy Perry, mother of D’Sean Perry, his best friend.
"She puts her arm around me when my name is brought up in court," Hollins told reporters. "Thinking of the strength that that takes to console another when your son is the one that’s not here, I think that that is what gave me the strength to push through such a tough week."
It was particularly tough for some on the final day. Although he never testified, Jones turned an opportunity to speak prior to the imposition of his sentence into a 25-minute monologue of unscripted apology.
"I am ashamed of myself," said Jones through sobs. "The only thing I can give you is my sincere apology."
Jones indicated that he deserved his punishment.
"I don’t deserve anything less than life," he said.
"To my friends and loved ones," he continued, "I’m sorry because you believed in me, and I let you down."
By the time is allocution ended, about a fifth of the grieving relatives and friends of the victims had left the courtroom.
Notably absent from the courtroom were Jones’ parents, both of whom the defense accused of physical and emotional abuse that led to mental illness.
Farley, however, contended that jealousy and envy, not mental illness, were stronger motivators for the attack. Evidence showed that Jones brought snacks for two women on the bus that day, but they ended up sitting with the football players, and Farley pointed out that Jones was a former football player who was accustomed to getting his way, even a free car, when he was a standout student in Petersburg.
"He was a big fish in a small pond," said Farley.
The final day’s proceedings were delayed 3 1/2 hours due to haggling over rebuttal evidence. The prosecution obtained jailhouse tape recordings made earlier in the week in which Jones, on a phone call with a friend, could be heard laughing at the proceedings and disparaging the victims as rich kids from comfortable upbringings.
The defense, which based its case on allegations of deteriorating mental health stemming from drug abuse and childhood trauma, called the surprise introduction of the recordings "gamesmanship" and said the defense team felt "sandbagged."
Judge Cheryl Higgins allowed the recordings.
But it was another recording, one played on the first and again on the fourth day of the hearing that, she said, helped steer her toward the life sentences, the maximum punishment for each count of first-degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding. That was footage of Jones deceiving a police officer five minutes after the shooting by changing his appearance, ditching his gun and phone, and feigning surprise about the violence.
One point the judge drove home was that there was no evidence that any of the victims bullied the perpetrator, something that he had alleged in text messages.
"His psychological function was seriously compromised," said Higgins. "But these distortions did not interfere with his ability to complete actions. He acted knowing that what was contemplated would lead to dire consequences."
Evidence Higgins named in her ruling included text messages to a mentor, a hospital fundraising executive named Xavier Richardson, warned of the violent plan with such texts as "they not getting off this bus" and "tonight I’m either going to hell or jail."
On Friday, the prosecution cited yet another concerning message that Richardson allegedly received prior to the killings: "Tell them to petition me for solitary confinement."
A jail official testified Friday that for his own protection Jones has spent time in solitary confinement. The official, Gregory Mandy of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where Jones was held shortly after his arrest the day after the killings, said Jones has four convictions for jailhouse assaults, one for fighting and one for a rule violation.
Defense attorney Nicholas Reppucci got Mandy to confirm that it’s not unusual for high-profile inmates to become the targets of other inmates.
While Jones himself showed no obvious emotion when the sentences were read, heavy sighs and sniffles filled the gallery. After the judge and defendant departed the courtroom, there was a round of applause.
"Based on the egregiousness of the crime, the outcome was what I expected," Douglas Chandler, uncle to victim Devin Chandler, told The Daily Progress.
While Richardson, the mentor who received the presaging text messages, declined to comment on the sentence, another mentor, Scott Johnson, who testified Wednesday, did.
"I’m just glad the family got their closure that they needed," Johnson told The Daily Progress after the sentence was rendered. "I think it was definitely fair, definitely no winners in this."
"I just wish," he continued, "there was a lot more we could have done for him from a mental health standpoint earlier on, and maybe we wouldn’t be in in this whole situation in the first place."
Source: www.dailyprogress.com