About 300 marchers in Powhatan protest Taliaferro verdict

Hundreds of placard-carrying protesters circled the Powhatan County Courthouse lawn yesterday, decrying as unjust a trial this month that failed to produce murder verdicts in the shooting death of popular high school athlete Tahliek Taliaferro.

About 300 people -- from 84-year-old Margaret Harris-Manning, to 12-year-old Justin Daniels -- marched peacefully a half-mile along Old Buckingham Road before circling a lawn bearing a statue that honors Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart.

"This was off-limits for us growing up," said Harris-Manning, the first and only black person elected to the county Board of Supervisors. "Nothing good was going to come from coming up here," her parents told her as a child.

Voted out of office in 2004 after her district was reconfigured, she said, Harris-Manning yesterday protested a court verdict that she said was reminiscent of a time she hoped had disappeared.

"Years ago, we were taught to be silent," said her sister, Gladys Morris, who lives in Chesterfield County. "Not after this."

A 12-person jury with one black member last week found Ethan Parrish, 25, guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Taliaferro's shooting death and guilty of assault and battery in the wounding of another youth. A second defendant, Parrish's cousin, Joseph "Joey" Parrish, 18, was found guilty of the same two charges and an additional charge of possession of a firearm by a felon.

Ethan Parrish fired six shots June 24 from a semiautomatic rifle toward a car carrying Taliaferro as the vehicle slowly passed the stopped car occupied by Parrish and his cousin. Ethan Parrish testified that he was frightened after seeing a gun and only wanted to scare Taliaferro and others as he held the weapon outside the car from where he was sitting.

After an earlier encounter with Taliaferro and his friends, Ethan Parrish said he knew there would be trouble. He readied the assault rifle and attached an 83-round drum clip. Parrish said that as he fired the gun, the weapon "rose up on me" and he lost control of it, sending rounds into Taliaferro and a friend instead of toward the ground as he intended.

But Stephanie Reynolds, who was driving the vehicle the Parrishes were in, testified that Ethan Parrish had said he was going to "smoke" Taliaferro.

The jury recommended an 11-year sentence for Ethan Parrish; his cousin will be sentenced by a judge.

"What you are seeing here is something that has never happened in Powhatan," said King Salim Khalfani, executive director of the Virginia Conference NAACP. "There are people here from across Virginia."

Khalfani said his organization and others are planning discussions with the FBI about the jury selection process, what may have influenced the jury, and facts of the case that may not have come to light.

"It will be a slow, incremental process," said Rovenia Vaughan of the Powhatan NAACP.

The march was attended by Taliaferro's mother and father and other family members, including grandfather James Taliaferro, 68, who said his grandson's death is painful but familiar. He said two cousins of his died decades ago under circumstances that have never been explained. One was found in the James River, the other, on a roadside.

About 50 white people joined the march.

"There should be more. Where are they?" asked one, Kathy Eheart, an amputee who attended in her wheelchair. "What happened at this courthouse is not right."

Gail Hairston, 54, one of three blacks on a jury pool of more than 40 people, who was not chosen as a juror, said she felt compelled to attend yesterday's march. "It's real sad to me because that jury didn't represent the people. Suppose the shoe had been on the other foot," she said of the racial imbalance.

But Richard S. Johnson Jr., a deacon at Solid Rock Baptist Church in Richmond, stressed that the racial overtones of the case will not resolve deeper injustices.

"We want to send a message that injustice affects all people," said Johnson, who in his prayer to the assembled marchers blessed the Parrishes. "We want to send a message that all people can be better."

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.