A Richmond jury on Wednesday recommended that a member of a self-described anarchist group spend a year in jail and pay a fine of more than $1,000 for puncturing tires on four Virginia Commonwealth University vehicles, including two police cars.
The Richmond Circuit Court jury deliberated less than a half-hour before finding Jeremy Hawthorne guilty of felony property damage for using a bearing scraper to puncture seven tires around 2 a.m. on Aug. 23.
Prosecutor Christopher Toepp said Hawthorne, 27, is a member of a collective known as The Wingnut, which has gained attention for videotaping police encounters with residents as part of their Richmond Copwatch group. Members of the collective also have said they take part in other activities, including feeding the homeless.
A little more than a year ago, Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood filed a lawsuit against one of the Wingnut members to require her to return police documents that Norwood contended his department should not have released. The city ultimately withdrew the suit after many of the hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Wingnuts through an open-records request had been posted online.
About 30 of Hawthorne's supporters crowded into the courtroom Wednesday to watch. Toepp showed the jury surveillance pictures of a man riding what appeared to be a woman's mountain bike approaching the area where the vehicles were parked, in an alley between the 900 blocks of West Broad and West Grace streets.
Toepp said the man in the pictures fit Hawthorne's description, and a VCU police officer testified that he saw a picture and recognized the man on the bike. When authorities arrested Hawthorne more than a week later, he was in possession of a mountain bike that authorities said appeared to be the one in the surveillance photos.
When Hawthorne was arrested, authorities said, he had a satchel that contained a bearing scraper, which a forensics expert concluded was used to puncture the tires.
Janissa Hamilton, one of Hawthorne's supporters, said during a break in the trial that authorities had only a vague description of a suspect from the surveillance images. "As you can see," she said, "there are plenty of people here that fit that description."
"This is a case of profiling," she added. "We feel the only reason that's remarkable in any way is that this is a white male. This happens to people of color in this city and all over the country every day."
The jury recommended that Hawthorne serve a 12-month jail sentence and pay a fine of $1,330, which was the cost of replacing the seven punctured tires, including labor.
Formal sentencing was set for April 6.
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