BILL GLOSE
CHRIS WINTON-STAHLE
MEREDITH OGOREK
rose into a clear blue sky above Jackson Ward, one of Richmond’s
poorest black neighborhoods. It was in the mid-’90s, a Christmas service was about to
begin, and something remarkable struck Claire Cardwell from her back-row seat: the
congregants settling into the pews were mostly women. So many of Jackson Ward’s men
were either already buried or locked away.
Cardwell, an athletic blonde with a layered pageboy and a heart-shaped face, received a
flyer at her office about the church service, so she stopped in. At the time, she was Richmond’s
chief deputy commonwealth’s attorney, and the city’s murder rate was more than a hundred
per year. As the women filed by to attend the service, Cardwell was surprised by how many she
recognized: mothers, sisters and daughters who had been at her trials, either speaking from
the stand or following her with pleading eyes from the gallery.