Fairfax County judges reject over two dozen plea deals, pushing back on leniency

Now to a Fox 5 exclusive. More than two dozen plea deals have been rejected by Fairfax County judges over the last year, citing issues like missing information and insufficient penalties. Chief Legal Correspondent Katie Barlow is live looking into what's behind the pushback with this. Katie? Well, generally, judges don't often reject plea deals when both prosecutors and defense counsel agree on the consequences that someone should face for committing a crime. It's fair to characterize what is happening in Fairfax County as extraordinary. Multiple judges rejecting more than two dozen plea agreements over the past year in Fairfax County in a range of cases from child abuse to assault to animal cruelty. A nine-year-old boy told police that Shanoa Darlene Camp beat him with metal rods and cords, forced him into a locked bedroom every day where he was made to urinate in a bottle and sleep on the floor between 2022 and 2024. Camp was indicted for child abuse. Two different judges rejected two different plea agreements because they were insufficient. Judge Dipti Padikati-Smith ultimately accepted a deal giving Camp five months in jail. DeShawn Calique Williams was charged with abducting his partner in January. Williams also kept her from police trying to intervene, who could see that she struggled to open her left eye. The sentencing guidelines recommended jail time between one year and 10 months, up to five years and three months. The original plea deal proposed no active incarceration. Judge David Oblon rejected the deal while noting he was not criticizing the attorneys in the negotiation, but he said the deal was insufficient given the facts. Brian Rojas barricaded himself in a showdown with police in December 2023. According to court records, he swung a machete at an officer and was arrested for attempted malicious wounding of a police officer. Officers also found a kitten in his apartment brutally beaten and stabbed. The judge who rejected the plea deal accused the Commonwealth's attorney's office of failing to provide details about the cat's injuries and death after attempting to drop the animal abuse charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. Quote, the Commonwealth's repeated failure to fully inform the court of the severity, lethality and brutality of the injuries distorted these proceedings. Now, prosecutors eventually dropped the case against Rojas for animal cruelty and against Williams for abduction. We reached out to the Commonwealth's attorney's office today. We have not heard a response, but a reminder, the court is closed given a federal holiday. We'll update you on air and online should we get a response.