Former Democratic state Sen. Joe Morrissey responded to VA-01 Democratic nominee Shannon Taylor’s ad, in which she highlights her past involvement in charging him with sex crimes.
Morrissey said Taylor, who is the Henrico Commonwealth Attorney, released the ad because she knew he was going to attack her for not prosecuting members of Henrico law enforcement for the death of Irvo Otieno.
Morrissey said peninsula-area Republicans called him two months ago and told him that he is the “only Democrat that called her out.” He said those unnamed Republicans asked him to go public, and that he told them he would.
While Morrissey had yet to say anything publicly since being asked to, he said word travels fast.
“Shannon Taylor then decided to release a commercial, which is so disingenuous,” Morrissey continued. “The commercial was released because I was going to publicly out her for what she did in Henrico County.”
How we got here
Back in 2013, when Morrissey was a member of the House of Delegates, he faced multiple charges for an inappropriate relationship with an underage employee of his law firm.
Taylor, Henrico County’s Commonwealth Attorney, asked the judge for a special prosecutor in the case.
“As Henrico’s top prosecutor I didn’t care that he was a Democrat or the pressure that I got to make it go away,” Taylor says in the ad.
Morrissey was charged with three felonies: taking “indecent liberties” with a 17-year-old, child pornography and soliciting a minor. He was only convicted of a misdemeanor of contributing to the delinquency of a minor; however, he avoided harsher penalties for the felonies.
He spent weekends in jail while serving in the General Assembly during the week.
Years later, in 2023, while Morrissey was serving in the state Senate, Irvo Otieno died after having a mental episode in Henrico County jail. Multiple videos have been released of Otieno being struck and held down by Henrico County deputies. He was then moved to a vehicle and transferred to Central State Mental Hospital in Dinwiddie County, where he died while being restrained during intake.
Morrissey said that around that time, he received a video of Otieno being beaten inside his Henrico County jail cell, and he called Taylor.
“I called her in my capacity as a sitting state senator, representing Dinwiddie, Petersburg and Henrico, and I said, ‘This murder did not occur in Dinwiddie. All of this talk about a murder did not occur in Dinwiddie. It occurred in Henrico County in the jail cell,’” Morrissey said Thursday.
He said that he also directed Taylor to the state code that allows the prosecution to occur in either locality if the violence inflicted and the death occur in different localities.
“She asked me to send her the video, and I did. I said, ‘Please call me back after you review it.’ Three days went by. She didn’t call me back,” he continued.
Morrissey said that he called Taylor back three days later and she told him that she did not see any criminal activity that occurred in Henrico.
Morrissey then repeatedly called Taylor out on his radio show, from the Senate floor, and during Democratic caucus meetings.
He said on Thursday that at one point, former Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw asked him to lay off Taylor because she is a Democrat.
“Sorry, Dick, it’s not going to happen,” Morrissey said.
No bad blood
Despite these events, Morrissey said there is no bad blood between him and Taylor.
“No, it’s not bad blood. I’m a big boy. She’s a big girl,” he said. “I had one conversation with her in 11 years. No, not bad blood, but in that studio and in the caucus and on the floor, I was very critical of Shannon Taylor.”
Morrissey was asked Thursday why he did not report Taylor to the Virginia State Bar.
“I don’t know how much more I could have brought it up publicly,” he said. “I’m not exactly the Virginia State Bar’s poster child.”
Morrissey has lost his law license multiple times. The Virginia Supreme Court denied his appeal in 2019 when he tried to get it back.
He was most recently disbarred in 2018 after the inappropriate sexual relationship he had with his 17-year-old employee, with whom he eventually married and then subsequently divorced.
This is also not the first time that Morrissey has worked with Republicans to go against Democrats.
During his reelection campaign for the state Senate in 2023, Morrissey faced former Del. Lashresce Aird for the Democratic nomination. Morrissey, though not directly, welcomed support from Republicans who painted him as the better option in the heavily Democratic district.
In a phone conversation with The Progress-Index at the time, Morrissey denied his campaign was involved in soliciting Republican support. Instead, he said, it was more of a friendly request.
“I reached out to Brad, who has asked me to come speak at his business on three separate occasions, and asked him if he would mind writing a letter of support for me,” Morrissey said. “He said he would be happy to do that.”
Aird defeated Morrissey in the primary.
Morrissey is currently running for a seat on the Petersburg City Council. He said Thursday that he believes Taylor’s attack ads will help him in his race and hurt Taylor in Henrico.
Taylor’s campaign is sticking by her ad as proof that she will represent all of the First Congressional District as she tries to unseat long-term incumbent Rep. Rob Wittman.
“Shannon took action against a powerful member of her own party to keep her community safe, now Joe Morrissey is acting out on a grudge because he was held accountable,” a spokesperson for the Taylor campaign said. “Today is another example that no one, no matter how powerful, or well connected, can intimidate Shannon Taylor from doing what is right.”
Dinwiddie County’s Commonwealth Attorney’s Office charged seven Henrico County Sheriff’s deputies and three employees of Central State Hospital with the second-degree murder of Otieno
The charges were eventually dropped for seven of the ten people, leaving two deputies and one hospital employee facing a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Otieno’s family eventually received an $8.5 million settlement to be paid by Henrico County, the Henrico Sheriff’s Office, and the Commonwealth of Virginia.