Attorney General wants public barred from LCPS court hearing

Nonetheless, Miyares is seeking to bar the public from attending a court hearing on Monday regarding the school district’s efforts to stop a special grand jury from meeting about the investigation.

“The requirements of Virginia [law] and a functioning special grand jury system mandate a closed hearing and sealed transcript,” Thomas J. Sanford, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a motion filed this week in Loudoun Circuit Court to close Monday’s hearing. “Public access to the July 11 hearing would play a negative role, not a positive one, with respect to the functioning of the special grand jury.”

In the motion, Sanford cited legal precedents that since grand jury proceedings are private, there is no First Amendment right to access to material related to the proceedings. He said “sealed and secret grand jury material will be inextricably interwoven into the hearing.”

Attorneys for the school district hadn’t filed a response to the motion as of Thursday afternoon, but Sanford wrote that he’d conferred with them and they oppose closing the hearing. On Friday, Victoria W. LaCivita, a Miyares spokeswoman, said a judge will rule on whether the hearing will be closed on Monday 

The assaults involved two female students who were assaulted at different high schools last year. After the first assault at Stone Bridge High School, the student who was convicted of the assault was transferred to another Broad Run High School, where the second assault occurred.

On Jan. 19, the student was found guilty of abduction and sexual assault and sent to a residential treatment center.

The student entered a no contest plea on the second assault.

The school division’s handling of the assaults was a major campaign issue for Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In an executive order on Jan. 15, he authorized Miyares to investigate the school district.

In seeking an injunction to stop grand jury proceedings, attorney Steven T. Webster, who represents LCPS, accused Youngkin and Miyares of an unconstitutional and politically motivated “fishing expedition.”

“Nothing in Virginia [Criminal] Code provides the governor with the authority to request the attorney general conduct an investigation or permits the attorney general to conduct an investigation by convening a special grand jury,” Webster wrote in a May 19 motion. “Virginia Code is expressly limited to authorizing prosecutions by the attorney general for which there is sufficient evidence to ‘institute’ and ‘conduct’ a prosecution.”