Jones v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 19 December 2017 |
| Docket Number | Record No. 0574-16-2 |
| Parties | Robert Lee JONES v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia |
| Court | Virginia Court of Appeals |
Charles P. Phelps, Chester, for appellant.
John I. Jones, IV, Assistant Attorney General (Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Present: Judges Decker, Malveaux and Senior Judge Clements
OPINION BY JUDGE MARLA GRAFF DECKER
Robert Lee Jones appeals his conviction for maliciously shooting at an occupied vehicle in violation of Code § 18.2-154. He argues that the Commonwealth failed to prove that he shot "at" an automobile within the meaning of the statute because he was inside that vehicle at the time of the act. For the reasons that follow, the conviction is affirmed.
On December 30, 2014, Jabari Lee was fatally shot while sitting in his sport utility vehicle. At the appellant's trial, Antoine Myler testified that he witnessed the appellant shoot Lee. According to Myler, he, the appellant, and Lee were in Lee's vehicle at the time. Investigators recovered bullets from the vehicle's driver's door window frame and the top center console.
The appellant made a motion to strike the charge of shooting at an occupied vehicle. He argued that the Commonwealth failed to prove that he was outside of the vehicle and that shooting from within the vehicle was not a violation of Code § 18.2-154.
The trial court denied the motion. In doing so, it relied on King v. Commonwealth, 40 Va. App. 193, 578 S.E.2d 803 (2003), reasoning that the statute focused on where the shots were directed, not where the shooter was located when he fired the weapon.
The jury convicted the appellant of maliciously shooting at an occupied vehicle, second-degree murder, using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and shooting into a public place, in violation of Code §§ 18.2-32, -53.1, - 154, and -280. In accordance with the jury's recommendations, the trial court sentenced the appellant to a total of twenty-six years in prison.
The appellant argues that the evidence did not support his conviction of maliciously shooting at an occupied vehicle because his occupancy of the vehicle that he "was alleged to have fired into precluded" his conviction under Code § 18.2-154.1
On appeal, this Court reviews a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction under well-established legal principles. An appellate court considers the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth granting to it all reasonable inferences that flow from the evidence. Stephens v. Commonwealth, 263 Va. 58, 59-60, 557 S.E.2d 227, 228 (2002). However, the facts are not in dispute, and the assignment of error hinges on whether Code § 18.2-154 applies to the appellant's actions.
The interpretation of a statute is a question of law that we review de novo. Graves v. Commonwealth, 294 Va. 196, ––––, 805 S.E.2d 226, 227 (2017). "This same de novo standard of review applies to determining the proper definition of a particular word in a statute." Miller v. Commonwealth, 64 Va. App. 527, 537, 769 S.E.2d 706, 711 (2015).
When a "statute is subject to more than one interpretation, we must apply the interpretation that will carry out the legislative intent behind [it]." Scott v. Commonwealth, 58 Va. App. 35, 48, 707 S.E.2d 17, 24 (2011) (quoting Evans v. Evans, 280 Va. 76, 82, 695 S.E.2d 173, 176 (2010) ). Further, we " ‘presume[ ] that the legislature chose, with care, the words it use[d]’ when it enact[ed] a statute." Rives v. Commonwealth, 284 Va. 1, 3, 726 S.E.2d 248, 250 (2012) (quoting Zinone v. Lee's Crossing Homeowners Ass'n, 282 Va. 330, 337, 714 S.E.2d 922, 925 (2011) ).
Code § 18.2-154, in pertinent part, provides that "[a]ny person who maliciously shoots at, or maliciously throws any missileat or against, ... any motor vehicle ... when occupied by one or more persons, whereby the life of any person ... in such motor vehicle ... may be put in peril, is guilty of a Class 4 felony."2 The question to resolve in this appeal is whether the statute encompasses a person shooting at a vehicle when the shooter is inside the vehicle.
(Emphasis added). Code §§ 18.2-154 and -279 are counterparts, as demonstrated by the legislative history of the two statutes.3 See generally Graves, 294 Va. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 229 ().
This Court has previously considered the same argument presented on appeal in this case in the context of Code § 18.2-279. In King, the Court concluded that the shooter's location is irrelevant to the application of the language in Code § 18.2-279 prohibiting "shoot[ing] ... at or against" a building. King, 40 Va. App. at 199, 578 S.E.2d at 806 (). The Court held that the statute's language referencing shooting "at" an occupied building "concerns the destination of the shot ... and does not specify the locale of the shooter." Id. As is true with Code § 18.2-279, had the General Assembly intended to limit Code § 18.2-154 to shooters in certain locations rather than simply the destination of the shot, it could have used express language to do so. See, e.g., Ratliff v. Commonwealth, 53 Va. App. 443, 447, 672 S.E.2d 913, 915 (2009) ().
The interpretation of Code § 18.2-279 applied in King is binding on this Court with regard to the use of the word "at" in Code § 18.2-154 in the context of "shoots at" or "shoot[ing] at." See generally Ricks v. Commonwealth, 290 Va. 470, 477 n.1, 778 S.E.2d 332, 335 n.1 (2015) ; Hannon v. Commonwealth, 68 Va. App. 87, 97, 803 S.E.2d 355, 360 (2017) (). "When a Virginia statute ‘employs a word or phrase which has already been used ... in another statute, and has there acquired by construction an established meaning, it is to be understood in the meaning previously determined.’ " Bagley v. Richmond Dep't of Soc. Servs., 59 Va. App. 522, 525, 721 S.E.2d 21, 23 (2012) (quoting Houston v. Commonwealth, 87 Va. 257, 262, 12 S.E. 385, 386 (1890) ). Additionally, in light of the legislative history indicating that the "shoots at" language in the two statutes originated from a single statute, "we are guided by" the "tenet of statutory construction that closely related statutes must be read as being consistent with one another."4 See Rivas, 51 Va. App. at 511, 659 S.E.2d at 526 (quoting Austin, 42 Va. App. at 40, 590 S.E.2d at 72 ).
Consequently, we construe the preposition "at," following the word "shoots," in Code § 18.2-154 to carry the same meaning as this Court previously applied to the word "at," following "shoots," in interpreting Code § 18.2-279 in King. We hold that the prohibition in Code § 18.2-154 against shooting "at" a motor vehicle focuses on the direction of the shot, not the location of the shooter. The undisputed evidence establishes that the appellant shot "at" a motor vehicle as proscribed by Code § 18.2-154, and we do not consider the appellant's location when he fired the shot because it is not an element of the offense.
The appellant attempts to distinguish Code § 18.2-279 and King based on the inclusion elsewhere in Code § 18.2-279 of the language prohibiting shooting "within any building." The Court in King, however, specifically discussed the language relevant to this case ("i.e., ‘at the building’ ") because that was the language used in the indictment, and it concluded that the phrase did "not specify the locale of the shooter." King, 40 Va. App. at 199, 578 S.E.2d at 806. Because King involved the interpretation of the same phrase—"shoots at"—that is at issue in this case, we conclude that King applies here.
The appellant also proposes that the plain meaning of "at" as a directional preposition suggests that "shoot[ing] at" as used in Code § 18.2-154 means a shooter who is not located within the vehicle itself. See At, Webster's Third New International Dictionary (2002) (defining "at" as "a function word to indicate that which is the goal of an action or that toward which an action or motion is directed"). He additionally suggests that the fact that, in contrast to Code § 18.2-279, Code § 18.2-154 does not contain the word "within" signifies that "at" does not also mean "within." See generally Williams v. Matthews, 248 Va. 277, 284, 448...
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