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Darrell Rice's supervised release in the Shenandoah biker assault has been extended by a federal judge. Darrell Rice leaves the courthouse in Charlottesville with attorneys James G. Connell III and Deirdre Enright. A judge expanded the conditions of his supervised release, even though Rice has been getting counseling and has a job. |
By PAMELA GOULD
CHARLOTTESVILLE-A federal judge yesterday expanded the conditions of Darrell Rice's release, even though he hasn't violated any of the terms imposed when he was freed six months ago.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jean Hudson argued that adding a year to the time Rice would be electronically monitored would not only serve the public interest, but protect Rice as well.
The state's attorney for Queen Anne's County, Md., where Rice now lives, wrote a Jan. 2 letter to U.S. District Judge Norman Moon supporting the extension.
Rice, 40, was released from federal prison on July 17 after completing his sentence for the attempted kidnapping of a woman bicyclist inside Shenandoah National Park a decade earlier.
Since then, he has completed substance abuse counseling, attended weekly mental-health counseling, gotten a job and been named employee of the month, according to court testimony and a letter from his probation officer.
But the Kent Island, Md., community where Rice lives created an uproar after learning of his presence in September. People made unfounded accusations that he was engaged in a variety of suspicious behaviors, all of which were proven false by the electronic monitors that track his whereabouts.
After his July 1997 arrest in the biker case, federal and state officials pursued Rice for three unsolved slayings in central Virginia.
In April 2002, he was charged with capital murder in the May 1996 deaths of two female hikers in Shenandoah National Park. But those charges were dropped two years later after forensic tests failed to link him to the crime.
DNA from another man was found at the scene and former Spotsylvania County resident and serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz could not be excluded as the source of two key head hairs found there.
In addition, Rice was accused of being the so-called Route 29 Stalker, and by extension the killer of 25-year-old Alicia Showalter Reynolds, yet all forensic tests in those cases also ruled him out as the source of evidence.
No one has ever been charged in Reynolds' March 1996 abduction and death. No one currently stands charged in the park killings of 24-year-old Julianne Williams and 26-year-old Laura Winans.
State and federal law enforcement officials said more than five years ago that Evonitz would be forensically tested as a suspect in all unsolved crimes. But agents never asked that he be tested as a suspect in the Reynolds, Williams and Winans cases, an investigation by The Free Lance-Star found.
Yesterday's hearing in U.S. District Court dealt with two issues: whether to add a year to the electronic monitoring of Rice, which would have expired tomorrow, and whether he should be forbidden from visiting any place where pornography could be viewed or bought.
He had already been forbidden from accessing pornography by his probation officer.
To demonstrate the near-impossibility of enforcing the proposed pornography restriction, defense attorney James G. Connell III brought to court magazines purchased at CVS, 7-Eleven, Barnes and Noble, and Kroger.
Connell also accessed a pornographic Web site on his cell phone during the hearing to show that, if the restriction were in effect, Rice couldn't have come into the courtroom without violating it.
Judge Moon agreed to formally restrict Rice from pornography, but said he would craft an order that was more narrowly defined. He didn't say when the order would be filed.
And though he agreed to extend the electronic monitoring, he did not specify for how long and noted the monitoring must eventually end.
As part of Rice's original sentence in 1999, Moon ordered Rice to be supervised by probation officials for three years following his release from prison.
After yesterday's hearing, Rice said he wasn't surprised by the ruling nor concerned about his ability to adhere to the conditions. But he said the monitoring makes it more difficult to acclimate into society.
"It just hampers my everyday life," he said "It seems like it's what everyone wants in the community, so I'm outnumbered."
Queen Anne's Sheriff R. Gery Hofmann III and one of his captains attended yesterday's hearing.
"We get a lot of questions from the community so we wanted to be here to hear for ourselves," said Capt. J.L. Williams.
Hofmann, who chatted with Rice after the hearing, said he supported extending the monitoring period.
"I think it's going to be in the best interests of Darrell," he said. "It will also protect him from being falsely accused."
Pamela Gould: 540/735-1972
