Williams: No peace without dialogue

Sign-toting protesters marched in circles, sporadically chanting "No justice, no peace!" as state troopers and sheriff's deputies blocked the entrance to the Powhatan County courthouse.

On an overcast morning Thursday, two defendants were being sentenced in the shooting death of Tahliek Taliaferro and the nonfatal wounding of Courtney Jones. Family, friends and the prosecution had called Taliaferro's death a murder. A jury of 11 whites and one black decided otherwise.

About 50 protesters steeled themselves for a worst-case scenario -- that the injury of the involuntary manslaughter convictions would be salted by the insult of lenient sentences.

The environment needed no provocation, but provocation arrived when the father of defendant Joey Parrish walked past protesters who accused him of addressing them with a racial slur. A young man had to be restrained by a fellow demonstrator as police intervened.

At this moment, Erica Johnson, Taliaferro's cousin, called for calm.

"This is what they want us to do. Chill!" shouted Johnson, 26, a mental-health counselor from Richmond. "We will do this the right way, even though we've been done wrong."

Her words restored equilibrium in a way the sizable law-enforcement contingent could not.

Moments later came word: Judge Thomas V. Warren had given the defendants the maximum punishment -- 11 years for shooter Ethan Parrish and 16 years for younger cousin Joey Parrish. The mood again shifted, as if someone had released steam from a valve.

A satisfying outcome wasn't possible, given the earlier jury verdicts. But the sentences were more than family members had dared to expect.

As the crowd dispersed, Johnson recalled the moment of tension.

"I know everyone's hurting. I know everyone's sorrowful. I know they're in pain," she said. "I know it's the common reaction to lash out. But I want us to stand firm."

Family members of the victims did not view yesterday as an ending. "I'm still going to fight for my baby," said Kaa Caputo of her son, Taliaferro, who would have graduated from Powhatan High School today.

Carolyn Jackson, the mother of Courtney Jones, says her once happy-go-lucky son is now angry. "Sometimes I hear him in there crying at night."

The night her son was shot, Jackson prayed on the way to the hospital. "I said, 'God, you leave him here. I don't care how you leave him here, but you leave him here.'"

It pains her that Caputo wasn't as fortunate. "My son is still here. He's going to have issues, but he's alive."

Family of the victims have also been wounded. Thursday's sentencing may have stanched the bleeding, but they are neither healed nor whole.

The morning started with the mantra "No justice, no peace." It ended with the Parrish cousins behind bars and the courthouse green clear of protesters. But when punishment fails to add up to justice, peace is illusive.

As we move forward from this tragedy, we must quit our romance with guns and embrace conflict resolution. That's the only way to sustain real peace.

Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or .