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A man charged with helping an inmate escape from jail in Lynchburg was denied bond on Thursday.
Joseph Edward Vesley, 19, of Urbanna, was in the Lynchburg Adult Detention Center on drug charges when Larry Dodson Jr. made his March 10 escape.
Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Chuck Felmlee told Judge Leyburn Mosby that witnesses will testify to seeing Vesley throw bed sheets up to Dodson.
According to authorities, Dodson escaped from the jail’s recreation area by lowering himself more than 100 feet on a rope made of tied-together bed sheets. After almost a month on the run through eastern North Carolina and Louisiana, Dodson was captured April 5 near Savannah, Ga.
In seeking bond, defense attorney William Quillian told the judge that Vesley had been accepted into a halfway house and a drug-rehabilitation program in the Richmond area.
The judge denied the request, but did order Vesley transferred to the jail in Rustburg after Quillian complained his client had to be jailed in Lynchburg in solitary confinement as the only means of protection against inmates who had threatened him.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Doucette said prosecutors in Chatham County, Ga., will go forward with felony charges there against Dodson of theft by receiving stolen property, theft by bringing stolen property into the state, and eluding before he is brought back to Virginia to face any escape charges here.
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Vesley has three counts of drug possession, two counts of grand larceny and one count of possession of drugs with intent to distribute in a school zone, not even mentioning the assistance charges. Sounds like enough to keep him locked up.
How do some criminals manage to get bond? It is the magistrates/Judges decision which is reached by looking at the individuals past criminal history, contribution(s) to society, the severiety of the crime, etc.. Some judges are more liberal than others too.
Imprimis - BINGO!!
brae4ever -
I’ve got a solution for Dodson and the kid that helped him and all the other poor inmates ...
DON’T DO THE CRIMES, YOU IDIOTS, AND YOU WON’T HAVE TO DO THE TIME!
These days, you have to work awful hard to go to jail. I’ve never been able to manage it, nor my wife, nor kids, nor 98% of the people I know. I honestly don’t know how people manage it.
Hard to work up any sympathy for them. Maybe they should be look on the bright side, and be glad they don’t live in Cuba or Russia or Spain or Mexico or Indonesia or Brazil, any of whose prisons would make ours look like a high-priced holiday camp?
Its crazy that the two people below are out on bond and the crimes they committed are way worse the the original crime that Vesley was charged with and the stupid set of of aiding the break out of Dodson. HOW DOES THIS STUFF HAPPEN? Does the press investigate and report that kind of stuff???
Bond granted to former Liberty Univ. professor facing sex charge: - charged with one count of object sexual penetration by force April 27th
Woman pleads guilty in Roanoke bank fraud case:-She remains on bond pending that hearing. April 22nd “Bank fraud is a serious crime that has the potential to affect all customers of financial institutions,” United States Attorney Julia C. Dudley said today. “Individuals with knowledge of how the banking system operates that use that knowledge to commit fraud must be held accountable for their actions.”
Sounds like a pretty poor reason to keep a 19 year old in jail instead of releasing him on bond. No offense but it sounds like Dodson is a seasoned escape artist who should have been watched better. Who knows what kind of pressure or what threats were made in order to force this Vesley kid to help. I doubt he even helped. I have a few friends that work in the prison system and they say that when you have guys willing to testify like this it usually means that they are the ones who helped and they are looking to pin it on someone. Our system is unbelievable. The jail is just looking to put the blame on someone fast to cover that they made mistakes.
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