By Hannah W. Wever

Published: April 17, 2008

After a two-hour deliberation, an Orange County Circuit Court jury found Charles Stagg Washington guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Marilyn Baker. Following the verdict, it took the jury just two hours to agree on a 12-month sentence in the case.
At the time of his arrest last year, Washington was originally charged with first-degree murder. Police determined 62-year-old Baker died last July 4 after being struck in the head with a child’s scooter, wielded by Washington, while he was engaged in a brawl with another man at Cathedral Place in Orange. The charges were later reduced to second-degree murder.
According to testimony from Wendy Lloyd, Roland Minor, and other eyewitnesses who testified about the events leading up to Baker’s death, Washington and Murphy were “locked-up” and wrestling on the ground. Witnesses said when Baker saw the fight from her house across the street, she came over to try to break it up.
Minor described his attempts to break up the tussle. “I was holding Mark. I told them, ‘Stop! Stop!’” While Minor had Murphy pinned down by the arm, he said, Washington got to his feet.
“I told him ‘It’s over. Go ahead and go on,’” Minor remembered. “Mr. Washington says ‘It’s not over!’ I looked around and saw him coming with the scooter. It was aimed at Mark’s head.”
Minor testified that he and Murphy both ducked as they saw Washington swinging the scooter toward Murphy.
“Somehow or other it missed Ms. Baker and it went out behind Mr. Washington. I heard a thump and I saw Ms. Baker fall,” Minor said.
When Washington saw her lying on the pavement, he rushed to her and began crying and cradling her head in his hands, Minor said.
Lloyd testified that the fight between Murphy and Washington occurred very close to her front doorstep. And, she said, Washington had been involved in a number of fights already that day.
“(Washington) was crossing my yard when Mark jumped on top of him,” she remembered. And as the struggle continued, Baker came over from across the street, Lloyd said, to stop the brawl between the two men.
“She was screaming, ‘Charles, get up from there! Stop this fighting and get up from there right now!’” Lloyd said.
Lloyd said she had an unobstructed view of the altercation between Murphy and Washington. And lying in the grass near where the men were wrestling was her son’s scooter, she said. She said Minor pulled the two men apart, and then Washington picked the scooter up and swung it.
“All I seen was Marilyn hit the ground,” Lloyd said. Washington was saying, “‘I didn’t mean to do it. I love you,’” she added. “Charles picked her up and rocked her back and forth and was just screaming and crying.”
Keith Gibson took the stand for the prosecution, dressed in a gray and white striped Central Virginia Regional Jail jumpsuit. He told jurors under direct examination that he was in the holding cell with Washington on the night of July 4, 2007, after Washington had been taken into custody following the fight.
Gibson said he heard Washington describe the fight with Murphy, and recalled Washington talking about the scooter and saying, “he was trying to take the other guy’s head off when he accidentally hit Ms. Marilyn.”
But, Gibson added, a few hours later, after Washington learned that Baker had died, “the whole story changed and he didn’t hit her with anything.”
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Michael Hallahan, Gibson said he had been optimistic that sharing the information about Washington would result in more favorable consideration on his own charges.
But Hallahan said Gibson was a “jailhouse snitch,” whose testimony was self-serving and unreliable. “He wants to do whatever he can to save his skin on his eighth or ninth felony.”
Hallahan argued that Baker’s death resulted from her fall, when her head struck the pavement, not by the scooter, and that there was no malice involved. The defense’s closing argument alleged that the commonwealth’s attorney’s witness testimony was suspect and full of contradictions.
“The commonwealth is trying to make you believe the scooter caused the injury on her head that killed her,” Hallahan told jurors. “Nobody—no witnesses—said the scooter struck her in the head. Nobody saw it. Nobody saw it because it didn’t happen. These guys were fighting, and she got bumped into. That’s clearly what happened.”
Orange County Commonwealth’s Attorney Diana Wheeler said that although every witness didn’t see every detail of the series of events that resulted in Baker’s death, testimony consistently revealed that Washington had acted with malice that day when he used the scooter as a deadly weapon. Even though Washington’s own friend, Baker, was the unintended recipient of the blow, there was the intent to do harm the moment the scooter was picked up from the ground and swung. That Baker was the one struck didn’t mitigate the intent to act maliciously, she said.
“It is a tragedy where a good woman died. This wasn’t a script for “CSI” or “Law and Order,” this was a real tragedy,” Wheeler said.
“His misbehavior caused the death of an innocent woman. She loved him and she died trying to help him,” Wheeler said.
Before the sentence was announced, Baker’s daughter, Sloan Pleasants tearfully described her mother to the jurors.
“She wasn’t only my mother, she was my friend,” Pleasants said. Baker, she added, was a grandmother and a great-grandmother. Later, Pleasants said her mother had a strong sense of community, and was always quick to offer help and hope whoever needed it.
“She was the first one to help everybody. She tried to take care of everybody,” she added, while the slain woman’s family and friends—including Washington, wept from their seats in the courtroom.
“Ms. Baker was the type of lady that loved all the neighborhood,” Wayne Morris said. He described Baker’s close friendship with Washington, who helped with chores or visited two to three times a week.
After the trial concluded and sentencing had been determined, families of Baker and Washington filed out of the courtroom.
Pleasants, fighting tears, said she and her family were grateful that the trial was over, and were satisfied with the outcome.
“If he’s truly sorry and remorseful, we’re okay. We just want it to be over,” she said.
Washington’s sisters, who came from other parts of the state to attend the trial, said they were heartbroken over the grief and loss Baker’s family was feeling.
Willie Mae Washington, Charles Washington’s sister said she was relieved the trial had come to an end, but she thought the process would likely go on far longer for her brother. To Charles, Washington said, Baker was like a mother.
“This will eat him up, maybe for a lifetime,” she speculated.
A formal sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 12. Since his arrest last July, Washington has been held at the Central Virginia Regional Jail, ineligible for bail.