Butcher v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 06 November 2018
• Docket Number: Record No. 0974-16-2
• Parties: Calvin Darnell BUTCHER v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals

69 Va.App. 406

819 S.E.2d 862

Calvin Darnell BUTCHER

v.COMMONWEALTH of Virginia

Record No. 0974-16-2

Court of Appeals of Virginia, Richmond.

NOVEMBER 6, 2018

Richard G. White, Jr., Assistant Public Defender (Shaun R. Huband, Deputy Public Defender, on brief), for appellant.

David M. Uberman, Assistant Attorney General (Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Judges Chafin, Russell and Senior Judge Clements

OPINION BY JUDGE WESLEY G. RUSSELL, JR.

Calvin Darnell Butcher, appellant, was convicted of misdemeanor failure to stop at the scene of an accident in violation of Code § 46.2-894.¹ On appeal, he contends that the trial court erred by convicting him because "the evidence was insufficient to prove [he] failed to stop and failed to exchange information." For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

"Under well-settled principles of appellate review, we consider the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party below." Bolden v. Commonwealth, 275 Va. 144, 148, 654 S.E.2d 584, 586 (2008). So viewed, the evidence establishes that, on March 14, 2015, at approximately 12:30 a.m., Alicia Pegram (Alicia)² arrived home from work and saw appellant standing outside of his car in her driveway. The two had been dating "[o]ff and on for about a year and a half or two years," until Alicia ended their relationship on March 13, 2015. Alicia had not invited appellant to her house, so rather than confront appellant, she drove past her house and appellant followed her. Alicia drove at speeds of sixty to seventy miles per hour on roads with a speed limit of twenty-five to thirty-five miles per hour to "get away" from appellant.

Appellant caught up with Alicia and swerved his car into the front driver’s side of her vehicle. Alicia ran off the road and stopped in a neighbor’s yard near a tree. Appellant got out of his car and approached Alicia’s car and began yelling and banging on her car window "like he was in a rage." Alicia called 911, and the dispatcher advised her to stay where she was. Because Alicia did not feel safe, she ignored the dispatcher’s advice and left the scene in an attempt to get away from appellant. Initially, appellant followed her, but eventually he gave up the pursuit.

Gary Pegram (Gary), Alicia’s father, testified that he owned the car Alicia was driving on March 14. He stated that appellant called him that morning between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. When asked what appellant said during that conversation, Gary said appellant offered to pay for half of the damage that had been done to Gary’s vehicle. Gary asked appellant "who was going to pay for the other half, and [appellant] couldn’t answer that so the conversation didn’t go any further than that." Appellant attempted to speak to Gary about appellant’s relationship with Alicia, but Gary "advised [appellant he] didn’t want to hear about a relationship between him and [his] daughter." Significantly, having been asked to relay what appellant said in the conversation, Gary did not testify that appellant had provided his address, driver’s license number, or vehicle registration number.

Officer Compere of the Petersburg Police Department also testified. Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on the day of the accident, he "received a call to respond to headquarters for a hit and run." When he reported to headquarters, he met with Alicia and Gary. After speaking with them, Compere went to the accident scene to further his investigation.

Regarding any attempt by appellant to provide his address, driver’s license number, or vehicle registration number, Compere testified that he received no call from appellant, that no note containing such information had been left at the accident scene, and that he "did not have that information" when he sought warrants against appellant at 5:52 that morning.

Appellant presented no evidence and moved to strike all of the charges on multiple grounds. Pertinent to his ultimate conviction for misdemeanor hit and run, appellant argued that the evidence established that he had stopped and attempted to communicate with Alicia and that the evidence did not exclude the possibility that he had contacted some law enforcement official other than Compere and reported the information required by Code § 46.2-894. Appellant also argued that, given his prior relationship with Alicia, she knew his identity, and therefore, the purpose of the communication provisions of Code § 46.2-894 was satisfied.

The trial court denied the motion to strike and convicted appellant of the offenses. The trial court found that appellant did not communicate the necessary information to any of the parties listed in the statute.

This appeal followed. Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence for his conviction on the same grounds he asserted in his motion to strike in the trial court.

ANALYSIS

I. Standard of review

When reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court considers the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party below, and reverses the judgment of the trial court only when its decision is plainly wrong or without evidence to support it. Farhoumand v. Commonwealth, 288 Va. 338, 351, 764 S.E.2d 95, 102 (2014). "[I]f there is evidence to support the conviction, the reviewing court is not permitted to substitute its judgment, even if its view of the evidence might differ from the conclusions reached by the finder of fact at trial." Linnon v. Commonwealth, 287 Va. 92, 98, 752 S.E.2d 822, 826 (2014) (quoting Lawlor v. Commonwealth, 285 Va. 187, 224, 738 S.E.2d 847, 868 (2013) ). This standard requires us to "discard the evidence of the accused in conflict with that of the Commonwealth, and regard as true all the credible evidence favorable to the Commonwealth and all fair inferences to be drawn therefrom." Parks v. Commonwealth, 221 Va. 492, 498, 270 S.E.2d 755, 759 (1980) (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). However, to the extent "an appeal presents the question whether the facts proved, and the legitimate inferences drawn from them, fall within the language of a statute, we must construe statutory language to answer the question. That function presents a pure question of law which we consider de novo on appeal." Smith v. Commonwealth, 282 Va. 449, 453-54, 718 S.E.2d 452, 454 (2011).

II. Requirements of Code § 46.2-894

Code § 46.2-894 states, in pertinent part:

The driver of any vehicle involved in an accident ... in which an attended vehicle or other attended property is damaged shall immediately stop as close to the scene of the accident as possible without obstructing traffic ... and report his name, address, driver’s license number, and vehicle registration number forthwith to the State Police or local law-enforcement agency, to the person struck and injured if such person appears to be capable of understanding and retaining the information, or to the driver or some other occupant of the vehicle collided with or to the custodian of other damaged property.

Here, there is no dispute that appellant was involved in an accident falling within the purview of the statute. The sole question posed on appeal is whether appellant complied with the requirement to "report his name, address, driver’s license number, and vehicle registration number forthwith" to an appropriate person.

By its plain language, the statute provides multiple people to whom a driver may report the specified information and thus satisfy the statutory obligation. The information can be provided to "the State Police or local law-enforcement agency, to the person struck and injured if such person appears to be capable of understanding and retaining the information, or to the driver or some other occupant of the vehicle collided with or to the custodian of other damaged property." Code § 46.2-894 (emphasis added).

The General Assembly’s repeated use of the coordinating conjunction "or" in its listing of people to whom a driver must report the specified information makes clear that reporting the information to any one of the identified people satisfies the statutory mandate. Statutory lists containing the word "or" generally are understood as being in the disjunctive, meaning that satisfying one of the listed conditions satisfies the statutory command. See, e.g., Sansom v. Bd. of Supervisors, 257 Va. 589, 595, 514 S.E.2d 345, 349 (1999) ; Harris v. DiMattina, 250 Va. 306, 314-15, 462 S.E.2d 338, 341 (1995).

In the habeas context, the Supreme Court has noted that the reporting requirement of Code § 46.2-894 is in the disjunctive. Although the habeas challenge dealt with other elements of the statute, the Supreme Court summarized all of the elements, noting that to convict, "the jury or fact-finder must find [among other things] ... that the defendant ... failed to ... report his identification information to law enforcement or the other person involved in the accident." Clarke v. Galdamez, 292 Va. 228, 236, 789 S.E.2d 106, 109-10 (2016) (emphasis added); see also Medwid v. Commonwealth, No. 1382-15-2, 2016 WL 7094223, at *3 n.3, 2016 Va. App. LEXIS 334, at *7 n.3 (Va. Ct. App. Dec. 6, 2016) (recognizing that the reporting requirement is satisfied if any one of the listed individuals is provided the information). Accordingly, the statutory reporting requirement is satisfied if a driver "forthwith" reports the required information to any one of the following: the State Police, a local law enforcement official, the person struck, the driver of the vehicle struck, another occupant of the car struck, or the custodian of the damaged property.

Although this may seem obvious from the statutory text, both the Commonwealth and appellant have asserted in this appeal that the reporting requirement is in the conjunctive, meaning that a driver in a covered accident must report the required information to both law enforcement and a person involved in the accident or the custodian of the damaged...