Committees certify Bedford judge

RICHMOND — After some consultation with Del. Lacey Putney and Sen. Steve Newman, two General Assembly committees certified Louis Harrison on Wednesday to be judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Bedford.

Putney, I-Bedford, said he worked to convince members of the Courts of Justice committees in the House of Delegates and Senate that there were reasonable answers to questions they had about Harrison’s role in a fundraising case from the National D-Day Memorial about 10 years ago.

Those questions kept legislators from electing Harrison to the judgeship last year.

Harrison went onto the bench temporarily anyway, after other judges in the 24th Judicial Circuit appointed him to the post on an interim basis. Harrison came back up for approval by the Assembly this year.

About 40 lawyers and other supporters from Bedford appeared before the two committees last week to back Harrison for the judgeship.

Harrison explained to the legislators that he made a mistake in signing a pretrial diversion document in the D-Day memorial matter, in which a federal prosecutor agreed not to prosecute him on a possible wire fraud charge.

“Last Friday, it looked like he was gone” as a judgeship candidate, Putney said. “I stayed on it, I went to see a lot of folks” on the two committees, he said. “Steve helped me,” Putney said, referring to Newman, R-Lynchburg.

“I’m delighted that we’re over that hurdle,” Putney said. “I’m assuming that tomorrow or next day, he (Harrison) will be elected by both houses” of the General Assembly.

The committees’ action Wednesday hadn’t been on their announced schedules. But it was necessary because Harrison’s appointment lasts only through the end of the month, Putney said.

Putney explained Harrison’s role in the D-Day case, in which Richard Burrow, director of the D-Day Memorial Foundation in the 1990s, was put on trial twice on federal charges that he used an illegal scheme to raise money for the memorial. Both trials ended in hung juries.

Harrison was a witness in the second trial because he had served as attorney to the D-Day Memorial Foundation. In that role, Putney said, Harrison certified that fundraising pledges people had made to the memorial foundation could be used as collateral for the foundation to obtain a loan from a California bank.

About two years later, Putney said, federal officials requested and received Harrison’s files from the case.

Putney said that some time later a federal official showed Harrison a set of instructions for certifying the loan documents. The instructions came from Harrison’s box of files. The official told Harrison that he had violated the instructions and would be indicted the next day, probably on wire fraud charges.

“It turned out that was a new set of instructions that he (Harrison) had never seen, that somehow got into the file” while it was in someone else’s custody, Putney said. “We can’t prove” how the instruction got into Harrison’s file, he said.

At the time, Harrison didn’t realize the instructions were not the same ones he had followed, and he signed the pretrial diversion agreement.

“I think the gentleman made a mistake” in signing that diversion, Putney told the committees.

No one on the Senate Courts committee opposed the motion to certify Harrison on Wednesday. In the House Courts committee a few minutes later, all but two members of the panel supported the certification.