For more than a year, Jennifer Boykin of Isle of Wight County and Dawn Jones of Suffolk have awaited their day in court to resolve Jones’ assault and battery charge against Boykin stemming from a Republican Party meeting over the method of nominating a GOP candidate for the state’s 17th Senate District primary election.

They’ll be waiting three months longer.

On Aug. 22, the date the matter was to go to trial, Judge Nicole Belote recused herself and rescheduled the case for Nov. 7 after disclosing she’s a close friend and appointee of the candidate who ultimately won that race.

Jones, the former chairwoman of Suffolk’s GOP chapter, filed the misdemeanor criminal complaint against Boykin six days after the two attended a March 8, 2023, meeting of the Legislative District Committee, a body of city- and county-level GOP chairs tasked with deciding on a nomination method.

The trial began with Sussex County Commonwealth’s Attorney Regina Sykes, whom the court had named as special prosecutor, eliciting testimony from Jones, during which Jones testified that Boykin grabbed Jones’ arm as the two were leaving the Ruritan clubhouse in Walters where the meeting was held, and shouted “you’re a farce; you’ve been disbanded” at Jones.

When Fred Taylor, Boykin’s attorney, cross-examined Jones, she testified that she was a supporter of Emporia businessman Hermie Sadler, who was running against Boykin’s preferred candidate, then-Del. Emily Jordan, R-Isle of Wight, for the GOP nomination Jordan would ultimately win in a June 20, 2023, primary.

It was at that point that Belote interjected, “I know Emily Jordan,” stating that she had a “personal relationship” with the now-state senator. Jordan was also a “significant reason” behind her 2019 appointment as a judge, Belote said.

After a brief recess to allow each party to discuss Belote’s disclosure, Sykes motioned for Belote’s recusal over the objection of Taylor, who accused Jones of “trying to drag this out.”

“This case has been just replete with barriers,” Taylor said. “Here we are a year and a half later.”

Sykes, however, contended it was ultimately her decision, and not Jones’, to push for a mistrial.

“I have a lot of faith … in Judge Belote,” Sykes said.

Still, Belote granted her motion on the “appearance of impropriety.”

The issue may reprise at the Nov. 7 court date, as Chief Judge Robert Barclay IV, the only General District Court jurist yet to be assigned to the case, was also appointed to the bench by a unanimous March 7, 2024, Senate vote that included Jordan. That same vote reappointed General District Court Judge Hellivi Holland, who had the case originally.

Holland, in July 2023, ordered Boykin’s trial delayed indefinitely pending the appointment of a special prosecutor after Isle of Wight County Commonwealth’s Attorney Georgette Phillips recused her office and Jones filed for “misdemeanor assistance,” which allows the alleged victim of a misdemeanor crime to request the matter be prosecuted by a commonwealth’s attorney.

Jones and Sykes each declined to comment on the latest delay in the case.

“It’s really disappointing,” Taylor said, stating his client has throughout the process maintained her innocence and asserting the charge to be “political retribution” on Jones’ part.

Jones filed a lawsuit in March 2023 alleging “certain high-ranking Republican Party officials,” including Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ offices, had been “working to support” one candidate over the other in the 2023 Brewer-Sadler primary by allegedly pressuring the Virginia Department of Elections to change the nominating method from a primary election to a convention. Despite testimony at a March 27 hearing not delving into exactly how Youngkin’s or Miyares’ representatives had allegedly pressured the change, a Richmond judge ordered a primary be held, and Jordan won.

State Republican Party Chairman Rich Anderson, in correspondence The Smithfield Times obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request to the Virginia Department of Elections last year, had written to Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals on March 7 and again on March 9 in 2023 contending “internal party dysfunction” had “manifested within the Suffolk Republican Committee” and that on Feb. 25 of that year the party had “disbanded” the Suffolk GOP, removed Jones as its chair and installed Steve Trent – who’d contributed money to Jordan’s campaign – in her place. Anderson, in a written statement entered as evidence at the March 27 hearing, contended Jones acted beyond her authority when she – not Trent – cast Suffolk’s vote at the Legislative District Committee in favor of holding a primary rather than a convention, and then, as the chairwoman of the LDC, certified that vote to the state.