Week in review

Tapes turn up

An audio tape of the Virginia Tech shooter's civil commitment hearing thought to have been destroyed in 2009 has been found among criminal and traffic files, not civil commitment files. Lawyers for the parents of Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde had requested the tape as part of two, $10 million civil suits against Virginia Tech stemming from the April 2007 shootings. Shooter Seung-Hui Cho appeared before a special magistrate in 2005, where he was ordered to have outpatient counseling; there's no evidence he received it. Cho killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus on April 16, 2007. A 10-day jury trial in the cases is set for Sept. 29.

Witnesses welcomed

More than 30,000 Jehovah's Witnesses are headed to Richmond this summer. Church members began arriving last Friday for the first three-day "Bible education session." More will come to the region during the next four weekends for the region's largest convention of the year. Richmond Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau president Jack Berry tells the Times-Dispatch the convention will bring "well over $1 million per weekend" to the Richmond area. The Jehovah's Witnesses have been holding annual public conventions in Richmond since 1992.

Kidnapping novelist

Want to get published? Why not try kidnapping your agent's kid? According to The News & Advance, that's what one Virginia author threatened to promote his new thriller. His novel, Rejection, is about a failed novelist who kidnaps an agent's 6-year-old daughter and threatens to kill her if his novel isn't published in 90 days. After checking with a lawyer, author Mark Davis filmed a fictional kidnapping to promote his book and sent an email to a number of agents saying, "By the time you receive this, I will have already kidnapped your child." His odd marketing strategy worked-- Davis got a contract. Publishing details are pending.

Laws enacted

Virginia closes the books on fiscal year 2011 and opens fiscal year 2012 today with an amended biennial budget that modestly boosts public school funding and aids state-supported colleges and universities. The budget also requires state employees to contribute 5 percent toward their pension plans for the first time in more than a generation, but fills the gap with a 5 percent pay increase.

Also among the new laws:

Execution scheduled

A Virginia inmate sentenced to death for raping and killing an elderly woman in 2001 is facing an August execution. Jerry Terrell Jackson, 29, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 18 for the murder of 88-year-old Ruth Phillips of Williamsburg. If Jackson chooses lethal injection over electrocution, he would be the first Virginia inmate executed under a new drug protocol that replaces the sedative sodium thiopental in the three-drug cocktail with pentobarbital. Attorneys are likely to appeal Jackson's case to the U.S. Supreme Court and ask Gov. Bob McDonnell to commute his sentence to life in prison.

Attack ads advance

Just when you thought campaign ads were over for a little while, two new groups are already running attack commercials for 2012. Crossroads GPS, a conservative political action committee, started the campaign with a $5 million ad that will play in 7 swing states, including Virginia. The ad attacks President Obama's stimulus program and blames his policies for "making things worse for everyday Americans." A day after Crossroads announced its ad campaign, Priorities USA Action, another political action committee has unveiled another $5 million campaign to combat the ads in a number of states, including Virginia.

Contractor sentenced

A former Blackwater contractor has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for the May 2009 shooting death of an unarmed Afghan civilian in Kabul. Justin H. Cannon was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in March. (see "Any Reasonable Person," 4/6) He and another convicted man shot at the rear of a vehicle on a dark road as it passed them near an accident, killing its passenger and a man who was walking his dog. They said they feared for their safety. District Judge Robert Doumar said they had been drinking and acted recklessly. Cannon was sentenced in federal court in Norfolk on Monday for the passenger's death. He was acquitted of all other charges. Cannon's attorneys said they will file an appeal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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