Next Tuesday, Virginia voters will elect or re-elect local prosecutors. The campaign has been especially dramatic in Albemarle County, where one case could end the career of a controversial incumbent.
Nearly three years ago, 51-year-old supermarket manager Mark Weiner spotted 20-year-old Chelsea Steiniger outside a convenience store. She was walking to her mother’s place after her boyfriend said she couldn’t stay the night with him. It was cold and late. Weiner, a family man with no criminal record, gave Steiniger a ride and jotted her phone number on a matchbook – in case any jobs opened at the store.
She told a whole different story – texting her boyfriend that Weiner wouldn’t let her out of the car and was trying to get into her pants. She claimed he used a chemical-soaked rag to knock her out, then took her to an abandoned house where he sent taunting text messages from her phone to the boyfriend.
“She’s so sexy when she’s passed out,” read one text message. “Imma warm her up.”
There was no physical evidence linking Weiner to the crime scene, and Steiniger says she was able to escape by jumping from a second floor balcony. Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford was convinced.
"We had a victim that I believed," Lunsford says. "I talked to her several times. She was very consistent, which is not typical. I didn't think she was capable of making up something as elaborate as this. The defendant immediately said, as soon as he was questioned, 'I didn't do anything to her,' without really knowing why the officers were there to question him. There was a history. He had a pattern of following women around, trying to give them rides in the middle of the night. The fact that he approached another young woman and actually managed to get her into the car was quite worrisome."
Steiniger didn’t call 911, but her boyfriend did, and when police left a voicemail early that morning, she checked it, then turned off the phone. The cops showed up at her mother’s house, and Steiniger answered the door, appearing unharmed. Later, cell phone records would suggest the texts were sent from that location and not the crime scene, but Lunsford argued, successfully, to keep a jury from hearing about that.
“The cell phone records would have established that the cell phone could have been located either at the crime scene or at the mother’s house,” she claims.
Weiner was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he got a new lawyer who moved to have the verdict thrown out. Among other things, he presented sworn statements from experts at UVA, that no chemical could knock someone out so quickly. Steiniger claimed she had never been to the abandoned house, but three of her friends came forward to say they had been there with her – smoking pot and drinking. The defense produced the matchbook with her phone number on it, and then came what Lunsford says was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The prosecutor joined the defense in asking that the verdict be dismissed.
"There was additional information that had come forward about the victim" Lunsford explains. "She had been involved in a drug transaction, and that was known to the police, and I hadn’t provided it to the defense until months after it happened. I believe if I had kept pursuing the case I could have won, and the verdict would still be standing, but I felt like it was either the public’s confidence in the justice system or this case that had to take priority."
Former federal prosecutor Robert Tracci says he had already lost confidence in Lunsford.
“The Constitution of the United States and the rules of professional responsibility dictate a fair trial dictate that all evidence is before the jury," he says. " I don’t think anyone can contend that occurred in the Mark Weiner prosecution.”
Active in Republican party politics, Tracci is now running for Commonwealth’s Attorney, but given his federal background, former state prosecutor Steve Deaton says he’ll have a hard time stepping into the office.
“The Commonwealth Attorney has to prepare the indictments for the grand juries, and the entire grand jury system is different in state court versus federal court. Jury sentencing is also very different.”
Tracci says he does know a fair amount about state law – having prosecuted offenses that occurred in the Shenandoah National Park – a federal property where state statutes apply.
“I’m very familiar with the state code of Virginia for felony offenses, for drunk driving offenses, for all types of felony evasion cases, assault cases, a lot of cases that I prosecuted for offenses within the parkway.”
And Buddy Weber, an attorney who’s argued in state courts for 17 years, says Tracci will soon learn what he needs to know.
“Rob is an incredibly smart guy. I’ve known him for a couple of years now, worked with him on political campaigns, and I’m convinced that he will very rapidly come up to speed and be able to handle things on the spot, and by the way, he’s got a staff of good, competent attorneys. They’re not going to skip a beat on day one. I guarantee you, the day after the election and the day after the turnover, they’re going to be in court doing the things that they’ve been doing for a number of years.”
“Yes, but then who’s leading the office?” Deaton wonders. “Are the assistants leading the office, or is the Commonwealth’s Attorney leading the office? Are they all going to have to teach the boss how to do things in Virginia courts?”
He’s not convinced Denise Lunsford did wrong, arguing that in cases where it’s one person’s word against another, it’s okay for the prosecutor to proceed and let a jury decide.
Now it’s up to the voters to decide whether Lunsford is guilty of poor judgment, and whether lack of experience will be a problem for Robert Tracci in an office poised to prosecute Jesse Matthew, Jr. in the murders of Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham.
Here are our interviews with Denise Lunsford and Robert Tracci: