A Richmond judge on Wednesday dismissed a defamation suit brought by former Richmond-area Sen. Joe Morrissey against private investigator and activist Jimmie Lee Jarvis over a tweet Jarvis posted in 2022 calling him “a violent thug, a liar and a sexual predator.” 

The evidence presented by Jarvis that there is a factual basis for his tweet is “overwhelming,” said Judge Charles Maxfield, according to a transcript of the Feb. 5 hearing. “There is a twenty-year history of these kinds of reporting of these kinds of incidents.”  

Attorney Thomas Wolf, who represented Jarvis, said that “with this ruling, citing overwhelming evidence that Joe Morrissey is a violent thug, a liar and a sexual predator, it should now be impossible to defame Joe Morrissey. The only person he has to blame for his putrid reputation is himself.” 

Asked about the ruling, Morrissey said in a phone call, “It is what it is.”  

Following the order, which Maxfield handed down from the bench but has not yet been officially entered by the court, Jarvis also withdrew a defamation suit he had brought against Morrissey, which was scheduled to go to trial Monday.

Morrissey, an attorney often styled as “Fightin’ Joe,” was Richmond’s commonwealth’s attorney from 1989 to 1993 and went on to serve in the General Assembly as a Democratic delegate and senator from 2008 to January 2024. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2016, losing to Levar Stoney, and also failed to win the 2022 Democratic primary to replace former Congressman Donald McEachin after his death. 

His actions both inside and outside the courtroom have been the subject of news stories for decades.

While commonwealth’s attorney for Richmond, Morrissey engaged in a brawl with another attorney outside a courtroom. In 1999, he was convicted of assault and battery in Henrico County for his beating of a handyman who had worked for him. 

Courts have repeatedly cited him for contempt over his career, and his law license has been suspended twice and revoked twice, most recently in 2018. An attempt to gain a law license in Australia after the first revocation of his license was thwarted when news emerged of his Virginia disbarment.  

A 2001 opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upholding his first disbarment concluded Morrissey had “a consistent problem with management of his temper, an inability to comply with court orders, and a chronic disregard for truthfulness.”

“Morrissey’s lack of candor, if not outright dishonesty, in dealings with this Court and those responsible for supervising the performance of his sentence is wholly unacceptable from an officer of the court,” the judges wrote. 

His most serious legal troubles occurred in 2014, when he was charged with having a sexual relationship with his 17-year-old receptionist and sharing nude photographs of her with a friend. Morrissey later entered an Alford plea — a plea where a defendant admits no guilt but acknowledges enough evidence exists to convict them at trial — for a misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He and the receptionist married; she filed for divorce in 2023. 

Former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam pardoned Morrissey for the misdemeanor before he left office in 2022. 

In both the Richmond defamation case and a separate defamation case Morrissey brought against Jarvis in Petersburg, Jarvis has argued that the attorney’s own record proves his tweet wasn’t defamatory. 

“There is no statement that is demonstrably false,” argued Wolf at the Feb. 5 hearing. 

Morrissey meanwhile claimed he was “not a violent thug, a liar or a sexual predator. For Jarvis to say so is defamation per se.” He said the claims in Jarvis’ tweet had caused him “damage to my reputation, and physical and mental damages including pain, headaches, suffering, emotional distress, sleep loss, anxiety and mental anguish.” 

In other filings, he said he planned to file affidavits from former City Councilwoman Kim Gray and an individual named Michael Dickerson who would testify that Jarvis told them he had posted the tweet while knowing it was false. 

Public figures like politicians have to clear a high legal bar to prove defamation because of protections the courts offer to political speech. Besides proving the statement in question is false, they also have to show the statement was made with the knowledge that it was false or with “reckless disregard” for whether or not it was false.

Maxfield, running through each of the statements in Jarvis’ tweet, said there was “a basis for the sexual predator aspect of this,” adding, “It is just well known that she was seventeen.” 

“There have been numerous reports of other courts, judicial bodies, finding dishonesty with respect to Mr. Morrissey,” he continued, according to the transcript. “And there were multiple cases of assaultive behavior, which supports the term thug.” 

Morrissey has filed numerous defamation-related claims over the years. His most successful appears to have been a 2010 libel suit against Style Weekly that was settled for an undisclosed amount. 

More recently, he sued local news station WTVR and reporter Mark Holmberg for defamation over critical remarks Holmberg made about Morrissey during a commentary segment that aired in September 2016, while Morrissey was running for Richmond mayor. That suit was dismissed. 

Morrissey initially sued Jarvis over his tweet in Petersburg General District Court but lost. He then appealed the case to Petersburg Circuit Court, which also dismissed it Jan. 3, although Morrissey has objected to the ruling. 

In the meantime, Jarvis sued Morrissey for defamation in Richmond Circuit Court after Morrissey made comments to a reporter about the Richmond City Democratic Committee’s decision to censure Morrissey. Jarvis, a committee member, introduced the resolution.

“They’re a bunch of young, white, entitled, wannabe-wokes who took a break tonight from spray painting people’s homes, setting fire to the city, and smashing windows, in order to censure me for simply defending the honor of my wife,” Morrissey told reporter Brandon Jarvis of the Virginia Scope. (Brandon Jarvis and Jimmie Lee Jarvis are not related.)

After Jimmie Lee Jarvis filed his defamation suit, Morrissey counter-sued for defamation over his tweet. 

With the judge’s dismissal and Jarvis’ withdrawal of his own suit, both cases were largely concluded this week, with the exception of settling attorneys’ fees. Fees also still need to be settled in the Petersburg case. In both, Jarvis is seeking to have Morrissey cover his costs on the grounds that the former senator’s lawsuits violated anti-SLAPP laws intended to discourage people from using the courts as a tool to chill free speech.