Attorney: Set aside Joey Parrish’s guilty verdicts

A Powhatan County judge will be asked tomorrow to set aside guilty verdicts of involuntary manslaughter and assault against the younger of two men convicted in last summer's shooting death of Tahliek Taliaferro.

Attorney Craig S. Cooley, who represents 18-year-old Joseph L. Parrish Jr., says he will argue that there was insufficient evidence in the case to establish that Parrish aided or in any way abetted his cousin's reckless, unpremeditated actions in Taliaferro's death.

Parrish's cousin, Ethan Parrish, 25, who was convicted of actually shooting Taliaferro and wounding another man, was convicted of misdemeanor assault and involuntary manslaughter. A jury recommended a sentence of 11 years.

Judge Thomas V. Warren of Powhatan Circuit Court is scheduled to sentence both Parrishes tomorrow in a case that has attracted widespread anger and controversy about the jury's verdicts.

Joseph Parrish faces up to 16 years on convictions for involuntary manslaughter, assault, and for a firearms charge. The jury did not recommend a sentence for him.

Ethan Parrish's attorney, Steve Conte, said his client is prepared to be sentenced tomorrow and will not challenge the verdict.

"In Ethan's case, we feel it was a fair verdict that reflected what really happened," Conte said.

Powhatan Commonwealth's Attorney Robert B. Beasley Jr. said through a secretary yesterday that he is withholding any comment on the motion until court tomorrow.

The Parrishes and a third defendant, Stephanie C. Reynolds, originally were charged with first-degree murder. Reynolds pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors and is free after serving 10 months.

Civil-rights leaders, including Curtis W. Harris, former president of the Virginia chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, have said the convictions on reduced charges were unfair and smacked of racism. On Sunday at a rally in Powhatan, Harris equated court proceedings in the cases to "legal lynching."

The jury consisted of 11 white persons and one black person. Taliaferro was black; the Parrishes are white.

The Powhatan Sheriff's Department is girding for a large crowd tomorrow; seating in the cramped county courthouse is limited to about 100 people.

The motion to set aside the verdicts does not pertain to Joseph Parrish's conviction for possession of a firearm by a felon, Cooley said.

In a summary of testimony, Cooley asserts that Taliaferro and five others "made a conscious decision to pursue and attack two substantially smaller young men and a girl with the specific intent to fight them."

The six people in two vehicles had with them four baseball bats; one of the drivers, Lawrence Harris, had a black BB gun that closely resembled a real weapon that he pointed at the Parrishes, provoking them, Cooley maintains.

Ethan Parrish, according to testimony in the case, pointed a semi-automatic rifle and fired after seeing the weapon held by Harris.

In that "instantaneous" shooting, Ethan Parrish was acting independently from anything his cousin Joseph said or did before the shooting, Cooley said yesterday.

Cooley said there was no plan that the Parrishes would confront Taliaferro and his friends at a fast food store on U.S. 60 near Flat Rock. And Joseph Parrish never suggested that anyone should fire a weapon, Cooley maintains.

Cooley cited differences between witness Courtney Jones' testimony at trial and at an earlier preliminary hearing: Jones "contradicted virtually every answer he had given.

"His trial testimony was so obviously perjured that the jury rightfully rejected it in favor of his previous testimony."

Cooley argues that although Taliaferro's death and Jones' injury were "unnecessary and tragic," it is clear the incident never would have occurred had the six young men not "made the conscious decision to pursue and attack the Parrishes."

Cooley says the confrontation grew from a rivalry between Taliaferro and Joseph Parrish that developed after a girlfriend of Taliaferro accused him of beating her.

The girl, a close friend of Joseph Parrish, testified at trial about the alleged abuse; testimony also showed that Joseph Parrish tried to have fistfights with Taliaferro over the accusations.

The girl was like Joseph Parrish's "little sister," according to Cooley's motion.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .