Aley v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 14 June 2022
• Docket Number: Record No. 0693-21-4
• Citation: 75 Va.App. 54,873 S.E.2d 89
• Parties: Adrian Donnel ALEY v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals

75 Va.App. 54

873 S.E.2d 89

Adrian Donnel ALEY

v.COMMONWEALTH of Virginia

Record No. 0693-21-4

Court of Appeals of Virginia.

JUNE 14, 2022

(G. Price Koch ; Spencer Meyer & Koch PLC, on brief), for appellant. Appellant submitting on brief.

Lindsay M. Brooker, Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Judges O'Brien, AtLee and Senior Judge Clements

OPINION BY JUDGE RICHARD Y. ATLEE, JR.

A jury convicted appellant Adrian Donnel Aley of felony hit-and-run involving personal injury and felony eluding, in violation of Code §§ 46.2-894 and 46.2-817(B), respectively.¹ The trial court denied Aley's subsequent motion to set aside the verdict and sentenced Aley to serve six months and thirty days in jail. On appeal, Aley challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his convictions. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

In accordance with familiar principles of appellate review, we state the facts "in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party at trial." Gerald v. Commonwealth , 295 Va. 469, 472, 813 S.E.2d 722 (2018) (quoting Scott v. Commonwealth , 292 Va. 380, 381, 789 S.E.2d 608 (2016) ). In doing so, we discard any of Aley's conflicting evidence and regard as true all credible evidence favorable to the Commonwealth and all inferences that may reasonably be drawn from that evidence. Id. at 473, 813 S.E.2d 722.

At 12:20 a.m. on May 6, 2020, Stafford County Sheriff's Deputies Scott Fulford and Colby Thomas were driving eastbound along White Oak Road² when a "white sedan,"³ traveling in the same direction as the deputies, "blew past" their patrol vehicle "at an extremely high rate of speed." The highway had a posted speed limit of fifty miles per hour. The road had meandering curves and was "extremely dark at night" because it had "no lights on it." The deputies lost sight of the speeding car before they could begin pursuit and, instead, began searching for a crash because they believed the driver had been traveling too fast to negotiate the curves in the road.

At 12:38 a.m., the deputies encountered the white car again, as it "came around [a] corner" on White Oak Road, accelerating toward them at what radar confirmed was ninety miles an hour, before turning right at an intersection. Deputies Fulford and Thomas performed a U-turn and attempted to initiate a traffic stop, activating their patrol car's emergency lights, but not its siren, as they pursued the speeding car down Bethel Church Road. The deputies accelerated "up to a hundred miles an hour" and approached to within "a couple hundred yards" of the car, but it "kept pulling away" until they "eventually lost sight of it."

Aley's girlfriend, Krista Jacobs, testified at trial that at 12:15 a.m. that same morning, Aley picked her up from her house in his "S5 white Audi" to drive her to his parents’ house near Bethel Church Road. Sitting in the front passenger seat as Aley drove eastbound along White Oak Road, Jacobs noticed that Aley began "driving very fast," exceeding sixty-five miles per hour along the winding highway.

Shortly before 12:30 a.m., Jacobs grew "afraid for [their] safety" as Aley passed the turn for their destination and "the speed seemed to increase." Aley briefly pulled over, and Jacobs admonished him to "[never] do that with [her] in the car ever again." In response, Aley told Jacobs that driving like that was "an adrenaline rush," checked her safety belt to ensure that it was secured, and reclined Jacobs’ chair "as if to relax [her]" before resuming driving. Aley drove in "the opposite direction" and, again, passed the turn for their destination. Jacobs felt "really scared and nervous." Aley reassured her that he "just want[ed] to drive around and listen to a couple songs" before going home.

Jacobs became apprehensive when Aley, again, increased his speed to over sixty-five miles per hour as they drove westbound on White Oak Road. Aley continued to accelerate and "came up very quickly behind a car," prompting Jacobs to "yell[ ] his name" in fear that he was "going to rear-end" the motorist. Aley "just looked at [Jacobs] and swerved around the vehicle." Aley then exclaimed "oh shit ... there is cops, I have got to run" as he took a "sharp right-hand turn" onto Bethel Church Road.

Jacobs "turned around and looked over [her] shoulder" to discover flashing blue lights, which she understood meant that "there was a police officer" pursuing them. Jacobs testified that "it didn't seem like [the police] were very far" behind their car when she first noticed them; later, the "blue lights" appeared more distant when Jacobs looked in the mirror, but she still could see them. Aley refused to pull over despite Jacobs urging him to do so.

At approximately 12:45 a.m., Aley "hit the brakes a little bit" as the car "came around a turn." He exclaimed "oh, no, we are going to crash" and "threw his arm over [Jacobs]" as they went off the road. At that point, Jacobs surmised that the car "flipped" because she could see "objects flying up in the car" and "everything sort of inverted." A hard object struck the left side of Jacobs’ head and face while the vehicle was airborne.

The car eventually "landed right side up," Jacobs saw "airbags everywhere," and the couple got out of the car.

Jacobs discovered that she had "somehow lost one of [her] shoes" during the crash. Her "head hurt," and the upper part of her left arm was "throbbing." Jacobs noticed Aley's head was bleeding, which "kept getting worse" and blood was "pouring out." Aley apologized to Jacobs and "asked if [she] was okay." He told her to follow him to an adjacent wooded area. Jacobs initially refused, citing her missing shoe as an excuse to remain at the scene because she "was afraid to actually say no to him." Aley attempted to carry Jacobs, but he abandoned the effort after failing to lift her. The couple ran over to a small clearing in the woods, but they had to return to the car so Aley could "get[ ] some things out" and Jacobs could retrieve her cell phone. They then returned to the woods to hide, with Aley telling Jacobs that "if the cops show up[,] we have to run."

Jacobs told Aley they "need[ed] to go to the hospital several times, because [she] knew that [she] was hurt, [she] could see that he was hurt, and [they] both needed medical attention." Aley repeatedly refused. Jacobs tried to call her friend, Connor Buchanan, for medical assistance because he was a trained paramedic, but Aley "yelled at [her] to get off [her] phone." Aley called his brother, who arrived approximately ten minutes later and drove the couple to his parents’ house. During that time, Jacobs was too "afraid" to call 911 or the police to report the crash because Aley kept "saying [they] had to run from the cops."

Around 1:15 a.m., the couple arrived at Aley's parents’ residence. Aley spoke to his brother in the kitchen "about what had happened" while Jacobs requested a first aid kit to clean Aley's head wound. Jacobs called Buchanan, told him that she had been in a car accident, described her injuries, and requested that he "take [her] to the hospital." He agreed, but she later changed her mind when she realized that Aley would not come with her because she "felt like [she] couldn't just leave without knowing that he was okay. So [she] wanted him to stay awake and not go to sleep so [she] could make sure nothing was seriously wrong" as a result of Aley's head wound. Jacobs treated Aley's wounds and encouraged him to go to the hospital, but Aley "kept insisting that he wasn't going."

Around 7:00 a.m., a passerby noticed a "heavily damaged" vehicle "off the road into the tree line" abutting Bethel Church Road approximately two miles from White Oak Road. "[B]ecause of the significance of the damage to the vehicle," the citizen called the Stafford County Sheriff's Office out of "concern[ ] that people ... may be trapped in the vehicle." In response, Captain Lee Peters, III, arrived at Bethel Church Road to discover a totaled white "2019 Audi"—Aley's car—in the woods by the highway with its hazard lights activated. The car was unoccupied. From "the [car's] significant damage," along with the fact that its "four-ways were still flashing" and "every airbag" had deployed, Captain Peters concluded that the collision "was relatively recent."

Relying on his training and experience in vehicular accident reconstruction, Captain Peters determined from the presence of "yaw marks"⁴ in the terrain that Aley's car had "slid" off the pavement and careened through several trees and nearby fencing before crashing approximately 300 feet from the roadway. The lengthy distance and absence of tire marks between "where the tires first left the road to where the vehicle stopped" indicated that the car "was traveling rapidly" when it ran off the road, and the driver had not pressed on the brakes or turned the steering wheel to avoid the crash.

Captain Peters searched the car and found the driver's side seatbelt in an "out and locked" position, "blood on the driver airbag," a "seatbelt hanging out of the passenger door," and "specks of blood on the passenger side of the seatbelt." Captain Peters concluded from that evidence that a driver and front passenger had recently occupied the vehicle and were both injured. Later at trial, Captain Peters emphasized that it was obvious that the collision involved personal injury, testifying "if you look at the car, you look at the seatbelts, and look at the blood, you look at the damage to the car, you understand the human body is not designed to take that type of trauma in a crash."

Using information from the car's license plate and associated DMV records, Captain Peters ascertained that Aley was its registered owner. Shortly thereafter, Captain Peters ordered a tow truck to remove the car and traveled to Aley's last known address, where he spoke to Aley's father. Captain Peters informed the father that...