Two Judges Riding Circuit in Rappahannock County Virginia Just Make a Huge Public Mistake

“Judges Blast Rappahannock Courthouse Plan as Unsafe, Outdated” was the headline in the Rappahannock News on April 10, 2026. In an open letter to the County Administrator, Judges James Plowman and James Fisher, as reported in the article, “severely criticized the current courthouse plan.”

A follow-up Rappahannock News front-page story on Thursday, April 16, 2026, included a comment from Board of Supervisors Chair Debbie Doheney, who said she was “disappointed” that the letter arrived the evening before the County’s “meet the design team” event on Saturday, April 11, an open, transparent forum on current design progress. The Judges’ letter is both erroneous and misguided, and its timing could reasonably be characterized as an unseemly last-minute political ambush of the legislative process.

The United States Judicial Branch of government, both federal and state, has accumulated tremendous respect and goodwill over time for its deep wisdom and its canon of ethics governing unbiased, impartial judgment.

Judges should be afforded full deference for their moral and intellectual knowledge and courage, unless shown otherwise. Both Judges therefore have every right to raise concerns about courthouse and courtroom safety and security, drawing on their experience with human-factors risk and design deficiencies.

I do not take safety and security lightly, nor will I ever. But their assertive, hollow, and hyperbolic writing demands a factual challenge.

An ethical boundary exists that judges must not cross: publicly pushing for particular funding decisions or political outcomes, or writing letters that read as lobbying arguments rather than neutral, fact-based analysis. But what is far worse is when they introduce factual errors.

It is not my role to adjudicate their letter, though the matter may well rise to the level of the state Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission. I make no determination regarding the ethical tone of their letter or the facts as presented.

As Rappahannock taxpayers, however, we are all fully qualified to address the factual claims published in The Rappahannock News. Their most egregious and dangerous misrepresentation concerns their assertion that underground judicial parking is a security necessity.

The Judges have put themselves on record displaying a potentially life-and-death ignorance. Their letter makes a point of insisting that the absence of in-ground judicial parking is inconsistent with courthouse guidelines and “in no way secure.”

I will challenge that claim directly and on the facts.

First, it would be instructive to see the documentation supporting such a fear-driven assertion, because that claim is directly contradicted by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS).

The USMS holds nationwide safety and security oversight for all federal courthouses. That organization would never recommend underground parking where it can be avoided in favor of an above-ground lot and open space is precisely what Rappahannock County has.

The Judges dismiss the County’s approach as a step backward, characterizing it as “reminiscent of the 1980s.”

I was on an active duty as a Marine when the horrific Beirut barracks bombing occurred in 1983, a tragic event that ripped the heart out of the Corps. That mass killing remains to this day the most important real-world case study for understanding the threat of Vehicle-borne explosives devices in a closed space.

Since that horrific event and 21st Century threats, the emerging expert consensus has grown far more studied and clear-eyed about the extreme dangers of underground parking structures. The physics of explosions in enclosed spaces are categorically more lethal: the blast is contained and amplified two to five times over. The fragmentation pattern drives the progressive collapse of exposed columns and slabs.

Fireballs, toxic smoke, and cascading vehicle ignition then compound the initial blast. Underground damage is extraordinarily difficult to contain, making such an attack a self-amplifying catastrophe. That grim calculus does not yet even account for burning electric vehicles, which produce toxic gases that firefighters are trained to avoid. Add that factor to the threat matrix and the case against underground parking becomes overwhelming.

There is one point on which I do agree with the Judges: their advice to reconsider the approach and revisit earlier designs.

What the Board of Supervisors should have done from the outset, consistent with nationwide customary practice for a project of this magnitude, is hire a highly experienced construction manager reporting directly to the BOS.

Had that been done, the original design for renovating our historic Courthouse could have been reviewed by the Judges from the start, even if the outcome of those back-and-forth negotiations might ultimately have remained contentious. The critical advantage of beginning properly is the statute. which requires a three-judge panel from outside the County to review and adjudicate a possible path forward for building out the existing structure.

Section E of the statute states: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize a circuit court to require that an additional or replacement courthouse be constructed.”

The Judges have now committed their position to writing.

Does that action trigger the statute?

Hopefully, in the wake of this letter, our fellow Rappahannock neighbors can take heed of Lord Acton’s famous warning: that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Editor’s Note: Ed Timperlake has owned a farm in Rappahannock County for 25 years.

He served as the first Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Public Affairs when the Department of Veterans Affairs was elevated to Cabinet status. As a Presidential appointee, he was responsible for all Congressional and media inquiries regarding building issues, construction deficiencies, and DVA property matters.

There were over 900 buildings under VA oversight during his tenure.