Patterson v. Com.

• Decision Date: 28 January 2003
• Docket Number: Record No. 2446-01-2.
• Citation: 575 S.E.2d 583,39 Va. App. 610
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals
• Parties: John Paul PATTERSON v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

575 S.E.2d 583

39 Va. App. 610

John Paul PATTERSON v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 2446-01-2.

Court of Appeals of Virginia, Richmond.

January 28, 2003.

Frank K. Friedman (Daniel S. Brown; Woods, Rogers & Hazlegrove, P.L.C., on briefs), Roanoke, for appellant.

Margaret W. Reed, Assistant Attorney General (Jerry W. Kilgore, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: ELDER, BUMGARDNER and CLEMENTS, JJ.

CLEMENTS, Judge.

John Paul Patterson appeals a decision of the trial court denying his request for termination of the period of suspension of his sentence. On appeal, he contends the trial court erred in concluding it lacked jurisdiction under Rule 1:1 to modify his sentence, as requested, more than twenty-one days after entry of the sentencing order. Finding no error, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

The relevant facts and procedural posture of this case are not in dispute. Patterson pled guilty in the court below to indictments for possession of cocaine and possession of psilocyn (illegal mushrooms). Both offenses occurred on February 20, 1990, when Patterson was nineteen years old and a freshman at Randolph-Macon College. On May 21, 1990, the trial court accepted Patterson's pleas of guilty and convicted him on both charges.

By sentencing order entered July 16, 1990, the trial court dismissed the possession of cocaine conviction and sentenced Patterson, who had no prior criminal history, to ten years in the penitentiary on the possession of psilocyn conviction. The trial court suspended that sentence for twenty years on the condition that Patterson "keep the peace, be of good behavior, violate no laws of the Commonwealth or any other jurisdiction, and that he receive drug testing under the direction of the Probation Officer of the court under whose supervision he is placed."

On May 13, 1991, upon receipt of a letter from Patterson's probation officer representing that Patterson was "a suitable person to be released from further supervision," the trial court entered an order releasing Patterson from further supervision by his probation officer. On March 9, 2001, Patterson petitioned the trial court to vacate its July 16, 1990 sentencing order pursuant to Code § 19.2-303. Seeking termination of "the period of suspension of [his] sentence," Patterson represented that the twenty-year period of suspension hindered him in obtaining "gainful employment commensurate with his education and training" and that it would prevent him from having his civil rights restored until he was forty-six years old.

At the hearing on Patterson's petition on May 16, 2001, the Commonwealth conceded Patterson had to that point complied with the terms and conditions of the suspension of his sentence. It argued, however, that, pursuant to the proscriptions of Rule 1:1, the trial court did not have jurisdiction to modify Patterson's sentence because Patterson's petition was filed more than twenty-one days after entry of the sentencing order. Patterson maintained the trial court had jurisdiction to modify his sentence under Code § 19.2-303 because he was never transferred to the Department of Corrections. He further maintained, in the alternative, that the trial court had jurisdiction to modify his sentence because the twenty-year suspension was so unreasonable in relation to the gravity of the offense that the sentence was void or unlawful. Citing Rule 1:1, the trial court concluded it did not have jurisdiction to make the requested modification and denied Patterson's petition accordingly.

This appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

Under Rule 1:1, "[a]ll final judgments, orders, and decrees, irrespective of terms of court, shall remain under the control of the trial court and subject to be modified, vacated, or suspended for twenty-one days after the date of entry, and no longer." Thus, once the twenty-one-day time period following the entry of a final sentencing order has run without modification, vacation, or suspension of that order, the trial court loses jurisdiction to disturb the order, unless an exception to Rule 1:1 applies. See In re Dept. of Corrections, 222 Va. 454, 463-64, 281 S.E.2d 857, 862 (1981).

Here, the trial court entered its sentencing order, a final order, on July 16, 1990. The trial court did not modify, vacate, or suspend that order within twenty-one days of its entry. Therefore, pursuant to the provisions of Rule 1:1, the trial court retained jurisdiction over Patterson's sentence only until August 6, 1990. Patterson did not petition the trial court to vacate the sentencing order until March 9, 2001.

Patterson, however, points on appeal, as he did below, to two exceptions to Rule 1:1 that he argues authorized the trial court to modify his sentence although more than twenty-one days had passed since the entry of the trial court's 1990 sentencing order. The first, Patterson asserts, is Code § 19.2-303 and the second is the principle that the "trial court may correct a void or unlawful sentence at any time." Powell v. Commonwealth, 182 Va. 327, 340, 28 S.E.2d 687, 692 (1944). We will address the applicability of each asserted exception separately.

A. Code § 19.2-303

Code § 19.2-303 provides an exception to Rule 1:1 under certain limited circumstances, as follows:

If a person has been sentenced for a felony to the Department of Corrections but has not actually been transferred to a receiving unit of the Department, the court which heard the case, if it appears compatible with the public interest and there are circumstances in mitigation of the offense, may, at any time before the person is transferred to the Department, suspend or otherwise modify the unserved portion of such a sentence. The court may place the person on probation for such time as the court shall determine.

See Russnak v. Commonwealth, 10 Va.App. 317, 324, 392 S.E.2d 491, 495 (1990)

("An exception to [Rule 1:1] is found in Code § 19.2-303 . . . .").

Patterson contends the exception to Rule 1:1 offered in Code § 19.2-303 applies to him because he had "been sentenced for a felony to the Department of Corrections but ha[d] not actually been transferred" to the Department of Corrections when he petitioned the trial court to vacate its July 16, 1990 sentencing order. Thus, he argues, the trial court retained jurisdiction to terminate the remaining, "unserved portion" of the period of suspension of his sentence.

The Commonwealth concedes that Patterson was sentenced for a felony to the Department of Corrections and that he had not been transferred to the Department when he petitioned the trial court to vacate its July 16, 1990 sentencing order. The Commonwealth contends, however, that Code § 19.2-303 does not apply to Patterson because the entire period of incarceration in the penitentiary imposed on him had been suspended and he was not, therefore, "going to be transferred to the Department of Corrections at any point in time after sentencing." Code § 19.2-303, the Commonwealth argues, was intended to apply to only those convicted felons who are "temporarily in a local correctional facility already serving their sentence awaiting transfer to the Department of Corrections." The legislature's use in the statute of the words "before the person is transferred to the Department" and "unserved portion of ... a sentence" mandates this interpretation, the Commonwealth maintains.

The dispositive question now before us is whether the trial court retained jurisdiction under Code § 19.2-303 to shorten the period of suspension of Patterson's sentence in consideration of "circumstances in mitigation of the offense" more than twenty-one days following the entry of the final sentencing order.

In resolving that question, we must look to the language of the pertinent part of the statute to determine the General Assembly's intent. See HCA Health Servs. of Virginia, Inc. v. Levin, 260 Va. 215, 220, 530 S.E.2d 417, 420 (2000)

("Courts must give effect to legislative intent, which must be gathered from the words used, unless a literal construction would involve a manifest absurdity."). As "[t]he purposes of Code § 19.2-303 are rehabilitative in nature," Esparza v. Commonwealth, 29 Va.App. 600, 607, 513 S.E.2d 885, 888 (1999), the statute should be construed liberally. See Wright v. Commonwealth, 32 Va.App. 148, 151, 526 S.E.2d 784, 786 (2000) (stating that statutes should be liberally construed in keeping with their rehabilitative purpose); see also Dyke v. Commonwealth, 193 Va. 478, 484, 69 S.E.2d 483, 486 (1952) (noting that courts should liberally construe Code § 53-272, Code § 19.2-303's predecessor, in order to "afford to trial courts a valuable means of bringing about the rehabilitation of offenders against the criminal laws"). This does not mean, however, that Patterson is entitled to an interpretation of Code § 19.2-303 that is inconsistent with the statute's plain language. See Cartwright v. Commonwealth, 223 Va. 368, 372, 288 S.E.2d 491, 493 (1982) (noting that a statute may be interpreted in accord with its purpose only to the extent that such purpose "may be accomplished without doing harm to [the statute's] language" (quoting Gough v. Shaner, Adm'r, 197 Va. 572, 575, 90 S.E.2d 171, 174 (1955))). "The manifest intention of the legislature, clearly disclosed by its language, must be applied." Anderson v. Commonwealth, 182 Va. 560, 566, 29 S.E.2d 838, 841 (1944).

By its express terms, Code § 19.2-303 permits the trial court, in cases where the defendant "has been sentenced for a felony to the Department of Corrections but has not actually been transferred to . . . the Department," to retain jurisdiction beyond the twenty-one-day limit of Rule 1:1 to "suspend or otherwise modify the unserved portion of such a sentence." Patterson argues that, because a portion of his sentence—specifically, the balance of the period of suspension of sentence—remained to be served when he petitioned the court to vacate its sentencing...