Ahead of fiscal year 2025, Ashworth similarly requested more staff members despite the Board being reluctant to fund additional positions. In response, Ashworth sent a letter to the Board stating she would withhold prosecution of certain misdemeanor charges if the Board didn't approve her request.
âThe bottom line is that this office was not properly staffed and funded for decades as the County grew up around us,â Ashworth wrote in an email to Potomac Local in April 2024.
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A judge ordered the release of Latoya Crabbe from jail after dismissing a second-degree murder charge against her, citing repeated missed deadlines by the prosecution. Crabbe, a Manassas mother of three, had been accused of killing her estranged husband, Curtis Crabbe, in October 2024.
Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Angela Horanâs decision came after she denied a request from the Commonwealthâs Attorneyâs Office to continue the case. With no viable path forward, the office was forced to drop the charges.
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The Prince William County Commonwealthâs Attorneyâs Office has been ordered to pay a $22,250 sanction for violating Virginiaâs Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FOIA law is intended to promote government transparency and public awareness of government activities.
Valeria Juarez, a citizen of Fairfax County, filed a lawsuit in 2023 after a series of FOIA requests either failed to include all requested documents or contained so many redactions that they were unreadable. Juarez contended that the Commonwealthâs Attorneyâs Office initially failed to provide 172 requested emails, and when they were eventually produced, they were so heavily redacted that they contained no meaningful information.
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Prince William County Assistant prosecutor D. Burke Walker told Circuit Court Judge Angela Horan that his office would file a motion on the first day of trial not to prosecute Latoya Crabbe on her 2nd-degree murder charge but instead will move to indict her on 1st-degree murder charge.
Crabbe is accused of murder in the death of her estranged husband, Curtis Crabbe. Curtis had made threats over text messages in the days leading to the shooting, police said. In evidence presented at a preliminary hearing in December, officers admitted they found an unsheathed and extended Italian Stiletto knife that Crabbeâs defense attorney, David Daughtery, argued showed Crabbe was in imminent fear for her life. Such knives were illegal in Virginia until a law changed in 2023. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 3, but Walker's admission questions the timeline.
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A Manassas man who brought an Uzi to Manassas Mall got a lenient sentence after Commonwealth Attorney Amy Ashworth offered him a sweetheart deal to close out two separate cases related to the mall shooting and a separate case where jail officials alleged he participated in a jailhouse beating with five other men who cornered and beat three members of a rival gang.
Daevon Russell, 19, of 9306 Taney Road in Manassas, who at the time, was on pre-trial probation for a 2023 Manassas City shooting that left another teen paralyzed from the neck down, went to the Manassas Mall on July 9, 2024, armed with the Uzi and got into an altercation with another group of teens in the food court.
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Mauricio Antonio Mayorga, 48, was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Nov. 21 for a March 2023 murder in the Hoadly Road Food Lion parking lot.
Judge James A. Willett found Mayorga guilty of one count of second-degree murder following his guilty plea on the charge. Willett also sentenced Mayorga.
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Ezzedin Baryoh was sentenced to nearly 70 years in prison after being found guilty by a Prince William County jury following an April 2023 shooting in Triangle.
According to a release from Commonwealth's Attorney Amy Ashworth, Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Petula C. Metzler sentenced Baryoh on Friday to serve 93 years with 25 years suspended, leaving 68 years to serve followed by five years of supervised probation.
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In a meeting on October 8, 2024, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved funding for new positions in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, addressing the office's need for additional resources to handle an increasing caseload. The positions include four new attorney roles: paralegal, victim-witness staff, and administrative staff. Commonwealth Attorney Amy Ashworth emphasized the importance of these positions for the efficiency and effectiveness of the countyâs criminal justice system.
The new hires come after Ashworth said she would withhold prosecution of certain misdemeanor charges, effective May 1, 2024, if county leaders donât give her more employees.
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In a recent episode of Potomac Local Live, I talked with Prince William County Supervisor Yesli Vega about various pressing issues affecting the county. Our conversation focused on crime trends, community safety initiatives, and policy responses to local challenges such as panhandling.
As we continue to cover important local issues, a video of this discussion will be available at the end of this post. We thank our members for their ongoing support of local news, which enables us to bring these critical conversations to the forefront, helping to keep the Prince William County community informed and engaged.
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In Prince William County, a catch-and-release style revolving justice system keeps more criminals on the street in the name of fairness.
A shooting at Manassas Mall on July 9, 2024, left two people injured, including one of five suspects in the case, underscores a more significant problem with the justice system in a much more progressive Prince William County.
At odds are those who want to reform the judicial process to make it more fair for criminals and those who wish to prosecute crime to get them off the streets for a determinate period. Caught in the middle are county residents.
Revolving Justice System and Its Implications
In a July 10 letter to her constituents, Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega, whose district borders the Manassas mall, highlighted two cases where individuals previously accused of felony offenses were released from custody and re-offended. In the mall shooting, she highlighted that 18-year-old Daevon Russell, one of the individuals involved in the gun battle that left a shooter and a bystander wounded, had been previously arrested after an August 2023 shooting for reckless handling of a gun causing permanent bodily severe injury, a felony.
Court records show Russell went to a classmateâs house and shot the cousin of the classmate, who was also inside the home, without provocation. Russell ran from the home, leaving the victim there to bleed. The victim went into cardiac arrest several times on the life flight to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where doctors were able to stop the bleeding and save his life.
Controversial Decisions and Judicial Diversion
When the case went to court, Judge Petula C. Metzer, on a recommendation from county Commonwealth Attorney Amy Ashworth, released Russell with nothing more than a promise to appear and the stipulations that he ânot consume intoxicants and have no contact with the victim.â Ashworth claimed her office argued for no bond at a previous hearing, but she could not produce the bond document to prove her claim.
There was no stipulation in Metzler’s order to not possess or carry a firearm. Russell is now accused of going to the mall armed and getting into an altercation in the food court that escalated to shots fired between the two groups.
In a separate case in her letter, Vega highlighted Arial Moya Claros, who has 11 previous charges involving alcohol and family violence over the last two years, before his arrest on July 7, 2024, for felony abduction by force and misdemeanor domestic violence assault and a second driving while intoxicated (DWI) charge.
Six months earlier, in a January 2024 case, Clarosâ landlord sought a restraining order against him after the landlord claimed Claros âtook the eviction process personalâ and claimed Moya Claros was caught on camera attempting to damage the landlordâs vehicles. A verbal confrontation ensued, and the police responded. The landlord also claimed in his petition for a restraining order that Claros followed his pre-teen daughter home, and she had to hide and call her parents because she was scared.
Clarosâ case was adjudicated in a family court diversion program in the two earlier domestic violence instances. Had he been convicted in either of the other domestic violence cases, he would be facing a Class Six felony charge for the Domestic Violence assault, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in jail.
Now, he faces only a misdemeanor assault charge because there were no convictions in the earlier cases, for which carries a much lighter potential sentence. Despite his history of violence and the escalation of violence with this same victim, Claros was released within hours of his arrest on a simple promise to appear.
Commonwealth Attorney Amy Ashworth points to Virginia law that judges only consider convictions, not pre-trial adjudications, when making bail decisions. This requirement by the code to only consider convictions and Ashworthâs focus on diversionary programs sidesteps the more intense consequences convictions provide for re-offenders.
Citing a long-standing prohibition on making statements about open cases, Ashworth said that her office âtakes domestic violence cases very seriously and would never agree to a bond if [her office] believed the accused was a danger to anyone or there was a risk the accused [would abscond].â She also said that her office makes good faith recommendations to the judges regarding bail and diversion, but âthe Judges unfortunately do not issue reasons for the decisions that they make.â
Diversion Programs vs. Public Safety
Diversion is a broad term referring to alternatives to prosecution that minimize an offenderâs exposure to the criminal system by offering an alternative to prosecution and incarceration. These programs bank on an offenderâs desire to stay out of jail, to get them on a path to not re-offend.
Diversion programs can help first-time offenders, but experts warn that overusing them for repeat offenders could weaken domestic violence prosecutions. This overuse might unintentionally support the ongoing cycle of violence that victims experience.
Elisa Castillo, director of domestic violence services at Action in Community Through Service (ACTS) in Prince William County, said, âDiversion programs have their place, but some people, for whatever reason, donât take the chances they are given seriously and jail has to be part of the equation.â
With Ashworth’s election in 2019, county prosecutors shifted focus from a reputation of being tough on crime to a more diversionary justice system that incarcerates fewer criminals and focuses prosecutorial efforts on programs to rehabilitate criminals before they go to jail. The result is a record-low incarceration population in the county lockup and a heavier workload on the probation office.
Prince William County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Terry Fearnley said the jail population hovers around 540 and represents only the worst of the worst offenders. That number is about half of the jail’s average under former county prosecutor Paul Ebert, who retired after 50 years. Under Ebert, the jail averaged 1,000 inmates.
The jail population is not a bellwether of a healthy justice system but can indicate problems. According to Steve Austin, the countyâs director of criminal justice services, referrals from the courts to his pretrial release program have risen nearly 19% during Ashworthâs tenure. Yet, recidivism rates, or the number of accused who commit additional crimes, in his programs have increased by two percentage points in the same period.
Ashworth has said that she does not maintain recidivism statistics, so we are unable to compare how many times people not involved in pre-trial supervision re-offend on her watch. In a statement to Potomac Local, Austin said he could not pinpoint why the recidivism rate in his program has increased despite increased staffing and budgeting.
Community Impact and Political Reactions
Supervisor Vega, reserve Prince William sheriffâs deputy, has been critical of Ashworthâs soft-on-crime policies for some time. She highlighted the two cases because they are âbut two examples of the catch and release justice system she sees under Ashworthâs watch.â Vega said she has a unique vantage point of the justice system, previously as a patrol cop and now in her reserve capacity working in the courthouse. âI hear complaints from law enforcement officers telling me that they are dismayed how quickly people they arrest for serious crimes are back on the streets within hours of their arrest and back re-offending, and I hear from constituents that are worried about how unsafe our community has become.
Ashworth is a founding member of the Virginia Progressive Prosecutors for Justice (VPPJ), a left-leaning political activist group. VPPJ has been a leading proponent of justice reforms in Virginia that make crime less detrimental for criminals in the name of equal justice.
VPPJ has called for the state legislature to end mandatory minimum sentences and cash bail. A 2021 letter to the General Assembly argued that these reforms would make it more fair for poorer Virginians. Ashworth does not think making the accused put up collateral to leave jail will help criminals return to court, âRequiring a cash bond punishes people for being poor, and it makes bail bond companies rich,â she said.
With the largest prosecutorial team in the commonwealth, Ashworth has made headlines for prosecuting significantly fewer cases and instead focusing on diversionary efforts as an alternative to prosecution. On average, Ashworthâs predecessor, Paul Ebert, prosecuted 350 felony cases monthly. Ashworth comparatively averages to indict 75 125Â felonies per month despite a massive influx in funding and personnel.
Her opponents have blamed the lack of prosecutions as the reason for the countyâs alarming 70 percent increase in violent crime between 2019 and 2023. In an unsuccessful bid to unseat Ashworth in 2023, Matt Lowery held a press conference highlighting the rise in violent crime last year. âMs. Ashworth has charted a course virtually identical to the ultra-liberal prosecutors all around us, and Prince William County residents have paid the price with their property, with their health, and even sometimes with their lives,â Lowery said.
In a 2019 interview with Potomac Local News, Ashworth stated that the fair handling of domestic violence cases was one of her top three issues when running for office. âI will assign a senior attorney to exclusively handle domestic violence so we can pay more attention to the serious domestic violence cases and sort out the minor âpush-and-shoveâ cases,â Ashworth said.
According to The National Domestic Violence Hotline, domestic abuse almost always escalates to something bigger without intervention. This escalation appears to be present in the Moya Claros case, where he is now accused of abducting his victim by force- a felony- in his current case.
Russellâs trial on the December charges is set for August 5, 2024. He remains at the Prince William Adult Detention Center with no bond after his arrest for the Manassas Mall incident. Heâs scheduled for a preliminary hearing on the mall charges on September 19, 2024.
Moya Clarosâ case is set for another adjudication hearing on November 19, 2024. He remains free on a promise to appear.
*This story has been corrected.
