Yesterday, Ed Barber had his pretrial hearing. In Virginia a pretrial hearing is when a judge makes certain the accused knows of what he is accused, checks to see what he's going to do about an attorney, and decides what bond is needed.
Judge Robbins set a $100,000 bond, but refused to impose a gag order on the participants in the trial (although he did order parties not to reveal the girl's name). The bond's a little high for the two reasons that bond is supposed to cover: to assure the accused will return to court and not be a danger to the community. After all, (1) Mr. Barber is a highly unlikely candidate for flight, (2) is not someone with a history of bank robberies, and (3) the bond was gone by a friend so there's no bondsman out there who is incentivised (word?) to keep a close watch on Mr. Barber and sic bounty hunters on him should he flee. Still, Judge Robbins is a fair judge and I wasn't there so I'll defer to his expertise (like he cares about my opinion).
Ned Mikula is representing Mr Barber, Sandra Sylvester is the prosecutor out of Prince William County who came down to do the prosecution, and the preliminary hearing is set for 13 April 2006 (3 months?). I imagine the hearing will be closed because of the involvement of a minor.
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