Suffolk reacts to historic convictions
Published 10:35 pm Thursday, September 4, 2014
Suffolk citizens were mostly unsurprised and — though in varying degrees — approving after news Thursday afternoon that a federal jury found Bob McDonnell and wife Maureen guilty of most of the corruption charges leveled against them.
Guilty verdicts were returned for 11 of the former governor’s 13 counts, while his wife has been convicted on nine of 13 counts.
Less than an hour after the news broke, Victoria Clanton, 62, said she didn’t follow the trial closely but thought the McDonnnells would be found guilty.
Clanton said she didn’t buy the defense’s argument that the marriage was all but over and thus the former governor and first lady couldn’t have conspired together.
“I really couldn’t believe that they were on two different planes of existence,” she said.
“It just sounded like the preponderance of evidence played against him. He seemed to be a very charismatic gentleman — a rather ill-advised one, what he thought he would be able to do.”
Leah Powell, 70, said she “feels like she’s (Maureen McDonnell) behind a lot of it. I’m surprised at him for doing what he did. I think he had a future in politics, but he’s ruined it now.”
Mary Jones, 81, also professed to not having followed the trial closely. “I really haven’t kept up with it,” she said.
But Jones picked up enough to reflect: “One’s just as guilty as the other, so I think both of them should do the time.”
Roderick Stokes, 27, cited “mixed emotions” over the outcome of the trial. “I thought he was going to be found not guilty, and I thought she was going to be found guilty,” he said.
I.W. Burris, 65, was another who commented on the demise of Bob McDonnell’s political ambitions — if he still had any — after the convictions. “If he intends to run for president, this would certainly damage him,” Burris said.
Lillian Maddrey, 83, said she was surprised and disappointed. “I think he was a very nice gentleman, and these things happen,” she said.
She noted that Virginia hadn’t seen this kind of high-level corruption before — or at least none that has played out in public and taken down a governor.
“This is the first, and it doesn’t sound so good for us,” Maddrey said.
Bob McDonnell should get some penalty for his actions, according to Roy Godfrey, 69, but “I don’t think it deserves an extreme sentence.”
“A little bit of a slap on the wrist is good,” Godfrey said. “I think it makes the people in office aware that you can’t be taking bribes.”
The successful prosecutions “speak well” for the judicial system, he said, but he had commented to his wife during the trial that it would have been better for a judge to decide, rather than a jury.
“A lot of times people like to see people in high positions fall,” Godfrey said. “A judge probably could have been a little more impartial and legally oriented.
“But I think it went the right way, I really do.”
Was 39-year-old Matthew Sutton surprised? “Not really,” he said.
“A politician has been found guilty of pandering to business? Here’s my shocked face.”
Prosecutors successfully argued that the McDonnells gave special treatment to Jonnie Williams Sr., who was trying to market a dietary supplement, in exchange for more than $177,000 in gifts and loans.
Court observers reported the McDonnells wept as the verdicts were handed down. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6, and the McDonnells say they plan an appeal.