"Legislation to protect or expand the rights of children under police interrogation likely will be in next year’s General Assembly session, a pair of Charlottesville-area delegates agreed Wednesday night.

Dels. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, and David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said the legislature must be careful as it considers bills to protect juveniles such as those questioned earlier this year by Albemarle County police in an alleged plot to bomb school buildings.

“I think it’s fair to say this is something we should look at,” Bell said at a First Amendment forum attended by about 30 people on the Downtown Mall at the Community Chalkboard and Podium, part of Charlottesville’s monument to free speech.

“I think children need to have more rights and I think parents need to have more rights,” Toscano said.

He said a bill to require recording of police interviews of children “is not such a bad idea. If you can’t allow parents in the room, at least put it on tape. I am more than willing to think through a number of these issues.”

The father of a 13-year-old boy who was acquitted of bomb-plot conspiracy charges last week by an Albemarle jury told Bell after the program that children and parents at least need to be told of their rights and options. The boy was interrogated alone for 40 minutes by Albemarle police and later charged, after police told him he was not a suspect and requested his help in their bomb-plot investigation.

Initially convicted in juvenile court on the charges involving an alleged plot to blow up Albemarle and Western Albemarle high schools, the boy, who will turn 14 in three days, was cleared when the jury acquitted him. The teen now attends AHS as a freshman.

“So far, he’s enjoying it,” the father said of his son’s new school experience this week. “He’s happy just being a plain old student.”

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression sponsored Wednesday’s chalkboard and podium event, which was moderated by Jane Foy of radio station WINA.

Bell and Toscano agreed that partisanship has become too ugly and intense in recent years, turning off voters, but they disagreed on a suggestion that legislative redistricting be made nonpartisan.

Nonpartisan redistricting could enhance competitiveness in elections while preserving other values such as having districts be compact and contiguous, Toscano said.

Bell, whose majority Republican Party controlled the last redistricting after more than a century of Democratic control of the process, said attempts to draw competitive districts could yield some very strange districts resembling “pizza slices” if Democratic cities were balanced evenly with Republican rural areas.

Bell and Toscano also disagreed about the proposed state constitutional amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

“The question is will it have an effect beyond marriage,” said Bell, who supports the amendment. “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think it’s a good amendment. It’s too broad,” said Toscano, an opponent. “I think it enshrines discrimination in the Constitution.”

The delegates addressed more than a dozen questions from the audience in what Josh Wheeler, associate director of the Thomas Jefferson Center, said should become a regular event at the Downtown Mall monument.

The chalkboard had been wiped clean about three hours before the event began but was inscribed with several dozen fresh messages, including one that read, “Vote Libertarian.”" (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, August 24, 2006)

Editor's Note: The Delegates' comments are available at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.