The law works in mysterious ways.
Tahliek Taliaferro and his buddies were hanging out near a Powhatan County ice-cream stand last June when a long-standing feud with fellow teenager Joey Parrish led to his death that night.
A witness said Ethan Parrish, Joey's cousin, pulled his semiautomatic rifle from the back seat of the SUV he was riding in and said he was going to "smoke" Taliaferro. You don't have to be well-versed in Ice Cube to know the lethal connotation of that verb.
As Taliaferro passed in his friend's car, he smiled at Ethan Parrish, who fired six bullets into a car whose occupants possessed nothing more lethal than a BB gun.
Taliaferro was shot in the head and slumped dead against the car's driver. Fellow passenger Courtney Jones, 15, was shot in the back and then spent 10 days in the hospital with a pelvic infection and lost part of his colon and small intestine.
None of these facts was really contested. But yesterday, a Powhatan jury determined that it was all a big accident. The Parrish cousins were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the slaying of Taliaferro and misdemeanor assault and battery in the near-fatal shooting of Jones.
The uncommon show of force in the courtroom -- a half-dozen Virginia State Police officers and at least as many Powhatan deputies -- foreshadowed the combustible emotions after the verdicts.
"One black on the jury!" a voice shouted from within an anguished circle outside.
"I have an $85,000 hospital bill, and for what?" shouted Carolyn Jackson, Jones' mom.
Taliaferro's grandmother stood surrounded by news cameras and microphones, a portrait of despair. "This will be with me until I die. . . . You don't know what I go through. I cry every day."
Perhaps the jury had its hands cuffed by its instructions, but the verdict seemed soft. Involuntary manslaughter for an attack with an assault rifle? And assault and battery for a near-fatal shooting?
"Justice wasn't done there today," said Jones' father, a seething Carl Jones.
Moments later, Taliaferro's mother, Kaa Caputo, wrestled with the verdict.
"They can't tell me it's not premeditated, because he was shot from behind," she said.
"We came here for justice," said Calvin Taliaferro, the victim's uncle, "and justice wasn't served today."
If you're black in America, you always worry whether justice will be served up fairly. Race had been only a vague subtext of the crime, and Taliaferro's mourners were white and black.
Stickers, T-shirts and a necklace were among the Tahliek memorabilia on display on a courthouse green whose centuries-old cedars were joined by news camera tripods. Yesterday's scene before the verdict was tense and subdued.
"You've got to understand -- there's two families here that have suffered a loss," said Cynthia Morgan of Richmond, who was there to support the Taliaferro family.
"To me, I hope it will bring the community together. The violence that's happened, it's happening all over the world," she said. "It has to stop. It's senseless.
"I just pray that it's going to be a peaceful resolution, and that justice is served. It's in the hands of the jury now."
The jury, in treating the defendants with kid gloves, dropped the ball.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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