A pending trial to remove Martinsville’s mayor from office represents a rarity in Virginia.
The complex case, which court documents label as “quasi-criminal” in character, could be the first time in decades that a jury in the commonwealth has decided a city mayor’s fate. Coincidentally, the vice mayor in Purcellville faces a similar hearing this week.
A judge in Martinsville will hear motions Tuesday, including one from suspended Mayor L.C. Jones, asking to dismiss the case with prejudice and order that any related criminal investigation be terminated.
Virginia has a law that centers on removing elected and some appointed officials from their offices through public petitions to civil courts. Many petitions have circulated, but few have led to trial. The last time was 1953, in a case that pitted Virginia Beach petitioners against their sheriff. The last mayor to be ousted via jury was Roanoke’s, in 1911.
More than a century later, Jones faces the same prospect.
“For more than two months I have been suspended from the office to which the voters of Martinsville elected me, without a hearing on whether that suspension was lawful in the first place,” Jones said in a statement released late Monday afternoon.
Multiple political intrigues in the city have centered on the circuit court suspending Jones in February, and ordering a trial on whether he should keep the job. Six months earlier, Martinsville council members had suspended, then fired, City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides. The city council in July authorized a forensic audit of the city’s finances that was released to the public last week, five months after the council received it.
After accounting firm Brown Edwards completed the audit, then-Commonwealth’s Attorney Andy Hall had it referred to a special prosecutor, Bedford County’s Wes Nance.
In January, a citizens group filed a petition with the Martinsville Circuit Court to have Jones removed, alleging in an accompanying document that the publicly funded audit, which at the time had been “concealed from taxpayers,” would reveal “sufficient evidence of wrongdoing” to remove Jones from office.
Hall’s successor, Patrick Flinn, asked Circuit Judge G. Carter Greer to appoint a special prosecutor. Greer denied the motion, leaving Flinn to file notice of his conclusion: Valid grounds exist to proceed with the petition, he wrote on Feb. 17. Greer ordered a recall trial for Jones and suspended him until then.
Greer retired shortly after suspending Jones, and the Virginia General Assembly appointed Stephanie Vipperman to his seat on the 21st Judicial Circuit. Her term begins May 1. The jury trial is set for June 5.
Meanwhile, Jones has announced that he is running for reelection. The petition for removal only applies to his current term, even if a jury decides to remove him, Flinn said in a March interview.
Nance’s involvement investigating city staff spending during Ferrell-Benavides’ tenure has ended as well, after the General Assembly appointed him to a judgeship on the 24th Circuit bench.
A substitute judge on April 1 granted Flinn’s renewed motion to withdraw, and appointed a special prosecutor, Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Bethany Harrison, to take on the civil petition as well as Nance’s role overseeing a state police investigation into the audit.
An email and phone call to Harrison were not returned on Monday evening. She has said she will not comment on pending litigation.
Substitute judges have sat in on aspects of the case, and another one, 21st Circuit Judge Marcus Brinks, who sits in Patrick County, will preside in Tuesday’s hearing.
Flinn, who investigated the petitioners’ claims before substitute Judge James McGarry relieved him with Harrison, has said the two cases are combined “at the hip.”
The petition contains allegations against Jones that include receiving a bribe, not disclosing conflicts of interest, neglecting official duties and attempting to impede attempts at addressing “gross mismanagement, violations of state and federal laws while” inhibiting protections for whistleblowers.
Decades-old case law in play
At least one of the Jones filings noting a “quasi-criminal” aspect to the proceeding references a case from 1953, Commonwealth v. Malbon. The defendant was the sheriff of Princess Anne County (now Virginia Beach), Roger Malbon.
According to the Virginia Supreme Court decision on that case, a circuit judge ordered Malbon to show cause why he should keep his office following a citizens’ complaint “alleging that he had knowingly and wilfully neglected to perform his official duties in that he had allowed open and notorious gambling and sale of intoxicating liquor.”
A Princess Anne County jury exonerated him, and the higher court upheld the verdict for Malbon, who would go on to be a Democratic party power and, in 1985, Gov. Charles Robb’s state highway commissioner.
Flinn relied on that case and one from 1923 in research he did before the judge relieved him. In the 1923 case, Warren v. Commonwealth, a court in Hopewell set aside a jury’s verdict that found the city’s revenue commissioner, I.M. Warren, not guilty of “malfeasance, misfeasance, gross neglect of official duties, and knowingly and willfully neglecting to perform the duties” of his office.
The state Supreme Court reversed that decision, sending the case back for retrial, according to the opinion. Warren resigned the next year, before another jury heard his case, according to newspaper accounts of the time.
The Supreme Court’s Warren decision, however, footnotes another of its rulings, from 1912. This one involved the removal of Roanoke’s then-mayor, Joel Cutchin, and it upheld a jury verdict from the previous year, which found him guilty on four counts of “unlawfully, wilfully, and corruptly” permitting, encouraging, conniving at, advising and maintaining “certain houses of ill fame” in the city. A grand jury report, not a petition, drove Cutchin’s removal.
The high court would return to both Warren and Malbon decades later when it reviewed Hopewell’s removal of two appointed election board members. Then-Chief Justice Donald Lemons, sending the case back to Hopewell, wrote in 2020 that the court found such an action quasi-criminal because it is primarily public, with the commonwealth as the plaintiff.
“There is very little case law in this,” Flinn said before Harrison took over the case. He has declined to speak about it since then.
Recall petitions past
Case law might be rare, but recall efforts have been fairly numerous in the commonwealth this century, according to the political information website Ballotpedia.org.
Recall petitions from last year — Jones’ case and a petition related to criminal charges in Purcellville — are active in courts. Purcellville’s vice mayor, Carl “Ben” Nett, and Town Manager Kwasi Fraser face bid-rigging and commercial fraud charges, according to LoudounNow.com. Nett was also charged with misusing a law-enforcement database.
A recall trial for Nett began Monday in Fairfax County Circuit Court. Purcellville Mayor Christopher Bertaut and two council members, Carol Luke and Susan Khalil, also face recall.
The site lists 41 petitions since 1987. Of those, all but two ended without a result for a range of different reasons. Those include failure to gather enough valid signatures (10% of the total number of votes cast at the last election for the office in question), resignation or electoral defeat. In some cases, the petition was abandoned.
One petition, to remove former Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Barefoot from office after accusations that he had sold his votes while a member of the city council, died after a federal court convicted him in December 2016 and sentenced him to six years in prison, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
Two of them centered on another Tidewater elected official, former Portsmouth Mayor James Holley — deposed twice by vote, not trial — in 2010 and 1987 (the website’s only entry for the previous century).
Among failed efforts in recent years was one centering on Montgomery County’s circuit court clerk at the time, Erica Williams. A judge ruled it invalid in 2016 because people didn’t know they were signing the petition under oath. In Lynchburg, where a popular vote for recall is part of its city code, a petition circulated against city council member Marty Misjuns in 2023 and 2024, but never made it to a vote.
Unsuccessful petitions elsewhere in Virginia sought recalls of elected officials for reasons including disagreements about COVID-19 policy and, in one case, the books used for a swearing-in ceremony.
Updating the law
A former Patrick County Circuit Court clerk might have made the list, had she not resigned. Sherri Hazlewood was charged in late 2022 on breaking-and-entering, alcohol and drug counts that led her to resign as a petition circulated to remove her.
Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, said her case motivated him the next year to sponsor a measure in the House of Delegates to update the law governing the removal process for elected and certain appointed officials.
Williams said that prior to 2023, a key part of the law was overly vague.
“The standard to prove the offenses was so high that very few [petitioners] could essentially win a case,” he said.
Suggestions for clarification came from the Boyd-Graves Conference, a group of Virginia’s leading lawyers working under the Virginia Bar Association’s umbrella, said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, who carried the legislation on the Senate side of the General Assembly. The Boyd-Graves Conference meets each autumn to study and suggest improvements to the commonwealth’s civil procedures, according to the bar association’s website.
In 2022, the group recommended strengthening the law by adding that neglect of “clear, ministerial duties of office” would be among the reasons for removal. That language was meant in part to reduce the number of petitions based only on policy disagreements, the group’s report that year stated. Ultimately, the language that passed the General Assembly read “neglect of a clear, ministerial duty of the office.”
Boyd-Graves also suggested procedural changes that included a specific form for the petition.
“The ironic thing … was she resigned on June 30th,” Williams said of Hazlewood, who died March 14 in Eden, North Carolina, at 57. “The law was signed into law on July 1st and so she did not face any consequences, but she was no longer our clerk so, you know, mission accomplished.”
As for the Jones case in Martinsville, Williams said it appears that the commonwealth is using the law as it is intended.
“I think you’ve already seen it being proactively utilized,” he said.
The rewritten law pulled in previous court decisions that had interpreted the statute, Surovell said. Simultaneously, another law the General Assembly passed cleared up a question that compared Jones’ case to the Purcellville recall. Nett, the vice mayor, remains on the job despite felony charges, while Jones was suspended after the judge approved the petition, with no charges pending.
Paul Goldman, who is part of Ferrell-Benavides’ legal team, is also advising Jones. The Richmond-based Goldman has questioned the apparent inconsistency of the law’s application, where the suspension is concerned. The removal law says a judge “may” suspend an official upon a successful petition.
Surovell pointed to a law that Sen. Russet Perry, D-Loudoun County, sponsored during the 2026 session. The bill, SB 648, which is now on Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk, includes a clause that would require the court in a criminal proceeding “against an officer of any town in Planning District 8 with a population between 8,000 and 10,000 alleging the commission of a felony offense to enter an order suspending the officer pending the resolution of such proceeding and any related proceeding for the officer’s removal.”
That clause specifically addresses Purcellville and would sunset after two years, Perry said while discussing it in a Senate Local Governments Committee hearing. Spanberger sent the bill back to the Senate on April 13, with recommendations that specify the measure is for an emergency, and removing lines related to compensation presumably earned during suspension.
Perry, during an interview Monday, said she expects the bill to pass on Wednesday, when the General Assembly returns to session. Spanberger added an emergency clause at Perry’s request, to ensure that the measure becomes law on Wednesday, instead of July 1, when Virginia typically updates its code, Perry said.
The special prosecutor in that case, Stafford County Commonwealth’s Attorney Eric Olson, could already have moved to suspend Vice Mayor Nett, Perry said, “but he believes that he cannot, the way the law is currently written. He and I disagree about that, but I do think it’s important, and this bill would require that suspension, pending the outcome of his felony case.”
Perry’s bill pertains to criminal cases, but Olson is also the special prosecutor on the civil petition side.
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, joined discussion on the bill in February and name-checked Martinsville, a locality in his district.
“We’ve got a city council that does not get along and are making accusations against each other,” Stanley said. “It’s a whole fracas, and yet we’re just doing this temporary bill, which is law for only a small period of time, to address one small problem, which, for me, and having been formally the chair of this committee, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.”
Unlike in Purcellville, the Martinsville politician is suspended, though he does face criminal charges.
Alleged gifts include a hot tub, airplane tickets
Flinn, in the case review that he filed with the circuit court, wrote that he was “frustrated by the refusal of parties involved to cooperate.” From there, he listed allegations from those he had interviewed, including mentions of 2024 gifts from Ferrell-Benavides of a hot tub to Jones or Jones’ significant other, and airfare to Las Vegas via a city credit card for the couple. (Jones ultimately reimbursed the city for his partner’s fare.)
The next year, Ferrell-Benevides attempted to have the city attorney-designate give Jones free legal advice related to the future of his job with the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, then tried to get the mayor a job with the city of Petersburg, where she used to work, the document alleges.
However, Jones participated in a March 2025 closed meeting that included discussion of Ferrell-Benavides’ pay, and “was given some level of authorization” to finalize negotiations with her, Flinn’s document reads.
On July 22, the council voted 3-2 to increase her salary from $183,500 to $215,000. The same body voted the next day to place Ferrell-Benavides on paid administrative leave, and later terminated her for cause.
The document alleges that Jones, who denied in two legally required statements of economic interests that he had received any gifts, arrived at another closed meeting in November as the council discussed a pending Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Ferrell-Benevides had filed.
Other participants in the meeting, citing the alleged conflicts of interest, said they could not continue with Jones present. He declined to leave, and attorneys from two outside firms declined to give councilors further advice on the case, Flinn wrote. The council went on to make legal decisions without their advice.
Ferrell-Benavides, who filed with the EEOC on July 2, has said that the city council fired her because of her complaint, in which she alleged discrimination on the basis of gender, race and color.
Among those quoted in Flinn’s filing are a former city attorney-designate, Eric Payne, and a former city council clerk and executive assistant to the city manager, Karen Roberts. Flinn wrote that he would ask to subpoena witnesses including the entire city council: Vice-Mayor Kathy Lawson and council members Aaron Rawls, Rayshaun Gravely and Julian Mei.
Jones did not return phone calls and an email asking for comment. In previous interactions with Cardinal News, he has said that the petition was based on unfounded rumors.
In a February motion filed by his former lawyer, James Ellenson, Jones asked the court to declare unconstitutional the law allowing his suspension.
In the motion, Ellenson wrote that Jones “has never been convicted or charged with any crime whatsoever” and that there “was no conflict of interest.” While he heeded city attorneys’ instructions not to discuss the matter, other city council members ignored that instruction, Ellenson wrote.
“It has all simply been a spurious witch hunt organized by one disgruntled, unhinged individual,” he wrote, without identifying anyone. “The entire petition and removal proceedings are simply a way to remove somebody from an office they were elected to by a tiny minority of voters who have some vague beef.”
The pending trial, however, is a removal proceeding, “penal in nature” — he could lose his elected position — and “quasi-criminal in character,” wrote Jones, representing himself in an early motion.
Dwayne Yancey contributed information to this report.
