Case Title: Gray v. Commonwealth

Citation: 

Docket Number: 992566

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2000-11-03T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  Carrico, C.J., Lacy, Hassell, Keenan, Koontz, and 
Kinser, JJ., and Compton, S.J. 
 
 
THOMAS ABRAM GRAY, SR. 
       OPINION BY 
 
 
 
  SENIOR JUSTICE A. CHRISTIAN COMPTON 
v.  Record No. 992566 
November 3, 2000 
 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
 
Defendant Thomas Abram Gray, Sr., was found guilty by a 
jury in the Circuit Court of Botetourt County in July 1998 of 
conspiracy to murder one James M. Martin, Code §§ 18.2-22 and 
-32, and of attempted possession of an unregistered firearm 
muffler or silencer, Code §§ 18.2-308.6 and -26.  Judgment was 
entered upon the verdicts, and defendant was sentenced to three 
years' imprisonment for the conspiracy and to a fine of $2,500 
for the other crime. 
 
Upon defendant's appeal to the Court of Appeals of 
Virginia, the judgments of conviction were affirmed.  Gray v. 
Commonwealth, 30 Va. App. 725, 519 S.E.2d 825 (1999). 
 
We awarded defendant this appeal to consider whether the 
Court of Appeals erred in its judgment regarding the sufficiency 
of the evidence to support the convictions; the 
constitutionality of Code § 18.2-308.6, the firearm muffler 
statute; and certain instructions tendered by the defendant but 
refused by the trial court. 
 
Employing settled principles of appellate review, we shall 
recite the facts in the light most favorable to the 
Commonwealth, the prevailing party in the trial court. 
 
James M. Martin and Dorothea Martin, both in their late 
forties, separated in March 1994 after almost 16 years of 
marriage.  After the separation, she lived in Bedford County and 
was employed at the Troutville post office; he resided in 
Fincastle. 
 
In October 1996, defendant, age 39, met Dorothea at the 
post office when he went there to obtain money orders in 
connection with his life insurance business.  At the time, no 
final decree had been entered in the Martins' pending divorce 
suit. 
 
In the proceedings, Martin had agreed to pay her $67,500.  
However, if he died before the divorce became final, she would 
receive his home (valued near $170,000), his half of his 
construction business (valued about $80,000), the proceeds of 
his $100,000 life insurance policy, and additional property he 
owned in Bedford County. 
 
The defendant and Dorothea began a sexual relationship in 
December 1996.  Dorothea's husband first met defendant in April 
1997 and learned about the affair after defendant had contacted 
the Martins' teenage son "and discussed [defendant's] whole sex 
 
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life" with him.  Later, Martin observed defendant and Dorothea 
together at a local "Pizza Den." 
 
In June 1997, Martin summoned defendant to testify at a 
divorce hearing, believing defendant would state that Dorothea 
was guilty of adultery.  Instead, upon Dorothea's promise to pay 
him $15,000, defendant lied about the relationship and denied 
having had sexual intercourse with her.  She reneged on her 
promise, and defendant wrote her a letter in August threatening 
to expose all her misconduct if she did not pay him the promised 
amount. 
 
In September 1997, Dorothea was planning her husband's 
murder.  She showed defendant a magazine ad for a "blueprint" to 
make a firearm silencer that she desired to procure.  She 
ordered the diagram and, upon receipt, showed it to defendant, a 
former mechanic.  Upon review of the diagram, defendant told 
Dorothea, that "you don't need nothing like that," and stated 
that the same purpose could be accomplished, that is, reducing 
the sound of a firearm, by use of an automotive fuel filter and 
by "knock[ing] a hole through it and put[ting] it on a .22."  
Subsequently, while so enamored with Dorothea that he would do 
anything she asked, defendant bought such a fuel filter and 
fabricated a firearm silencer to fit two .22 caliber rifles that 
he owned. 
 
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The relationship between defendant and Dorothea became 
turbulent.  On February 20, 1998, defendant called Martin on the 
telephone telling him "that Dorothea was [a] no count tramp and 
there was some things that [Martin] should know and he had a 
tape he said would prove everything that he was telling [Martin] 
about her was the truth."  Defendant and Martin met later that 
day and defendant had Martin listen to an audio tape recording 
of conversations between defendant and Dorothea in which they 
discussed "their sex and telephone sex and all kinds of talk 
about [Martin] and just everything."  At that meeting, defendant 
told Martin that "she'd used [defendant], played him for a fool, 
played him for a sucker." 
 
Defendant gave Martin the tape, and he met Dorothea the 
following night.  According to Martin, when he played the tape 
for her, "[s]he denied every word of it," although the sound of 
her voice on the recording was clear. 
 
The evidence establishes a plan by Dorothea and defendant 
to have Martin murdered by an out-of-state assassin while Martin 
was following a routine of walking alone at night near the 
Roanoke airport.  During a discussion on February 22, 1998 at 
defendant's home between Martin and defendant that was recorded 
on tape by Martin with defendant's consent, defendant revealed 
the murder plot to Martin.  Defendant exhibited a rifle while 
"screwing a silencer on the end of it."  Defendant said, "'Jim, 
 
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this was made for you.'"  Defendant stated, "'Dorothea ordered 
the plans and I made it.'"  Continuing, defendant told Martin, 
" 'Jim, she wants you dead . . . she tells me that with a phone 
call and a plane ticket you're history.' "  According to Martin, 
defendant "told me why he built it, he built it to kill me." 
 
The next day, February 23, Martin contacted the Virginia 
State Police at the Salem office where he was interviewed by 
special agent Doug Orebaugh.  Executing a search warrant at 
defendant's home on that day, Orebaugh seized the home-made 
silencer from defendant's tool box along with two .22 caliber 
rifles the barrels of which had been threaded to accept the 
silencer. 
 
Orebaugh also seized from defendant nearly 100 audio tapes 
containing "a couple hundred hours" of recorded conversations, 
mainly between defendant and Dorothea involving so-called 
"telephone sex."  These conversations had been taped because 
defendant's office telephone was voice activated.  Many of the 
tapes that included conversations related to the murder plot 
were played for the jury. 
 
The following colloquy between defendant and Dorothea 
illustrates the nature of many of the comments between the duo 
about the murder plot.  During a conversation recorded on 
November 15, 1997, defendant described his efforts to muffle the 
sound of the rifle shot and to make the firing "completely 
 
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quiet."  He stated, "The only thing you can hear is the trigger 
snap . . . going clunk.  That's all you hear and then you hear 
the bullet hit, plunk."  Dorothea responded, "I want to hear 
that bullet hit.  Yee-ha."  Defendant then said, "You don't want 
to do it fast . . . . This is something that's got a lot of pain 
and suffering in it.  Slowly, gradually.  The first one is dead 
center below the belt.  You've heard of getting shot in the 
ass."  At trial, defendant admitted he was referring in that 
conversation to Martin being shot. 
 
Defendant testified that he had not agreed with Dorothea to 
kill Martin nor had he intended that Martin be killed.  He 
stated that he made the silencer for his teenage son to use when 
hunting squirrels.  When called to testify by defendant's 
counsel, Dorothea refused, invoking her constitutional privilege 
against self-incrimination. 
 
In this appeal, defendant contends the Court of Appeals 
erred by affirming the trial court's failure to strike the 
evidence with respect to the charge of conspiracy to commit 
murder.  Defendant argues the evidence was insufficient to 
support the conviction.  We disagree. 
 
A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons by 
some concerted action to commit an offense.  Wright v. 
Commonwealth, 224 Va. 502, 505, 297 S.E.2d 711, 713 (1982); 
Falden v. Commonwealth, 167 Va. 542, 544, 189 S.E. 326, 327 
 
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(1937).  See Code § 18.2-22.  The crime may be proved by 
circumstantial evidence.  Indeed, because of the very nature of 
the offense, "it often may be established only by indirect and 
circumstantial evidence."  Floyd v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 575, 
580, 249 S.E.2d 171, 174 (1978). 
 
In Virginia, the crime of conspiracy is complete when the 
parties agree to commit an offense.  Falden, 167 Va. at 544, 189 
S.E. at 327.  No overt act in furtherance of the underlying 
crime is necessary.  Stevens v. Commonwealth, 14 Va. App. 238, 
241, 415 S.E.2d 881, 883 (1992). 
 
In the present case, the evidence is sufficient for a jury 
reasonably to infer from all the circumstances that defendant 
agreed with Dorothea to have Martin killed so that she could 
receive a financial windfall.  As part of the agreement, 
defendant was to make a firearm silencer that he contemplated 
Dorothea would use to accomplish the homicide, employing, in 
defendant's words, "some out of town muscle."  The jury was 
entitled to reject defendant's denials that he agreed to have 
Martin shot and his assertion that he attempted to make the 
silencer for his son's use. 
 
Next, defendant contends the Court of Appeals erred in 
affirming the trial court's failure to strike the evidence with 
respect to the charge of attempted possession of a firearm 
 
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silencer in violation of Code § 18.2-308.6.  Defendant argues 
the evidence was insufficient to convict. 
 
At the threshold of this issue, however, defendant contends 
the statute is unconstitutionally vague and the indictment 
should have been dismissed for that reason.  He argues the 
statute fails to define the prohibited conduct with sufficient 
clarity to provide reasonable persons with fair notice of what 
is prohibited.  We do not agree. 
 
Code § 18.2-308.6 provides: 
"It shall be unlawful for any person to possess any 
firearm muffler or firearm silencer which is not 
registered to him in the National Firearms 
Registration and Transfer Record.  A violation of this 
section shall be punishable as a Class 6 felony." 
 
 
Defendant has no standing to mount a broad, general, facial 
statutory challenge because he does not contend his conduct was 
constitutionally protected nor is the First Amendment 
implicated.  Woodfin v. Commonwealth, 236 Va. 89, 92, 372 S.E.2d 
377, 379 (1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1009 (1989).  Thus, the 
narrow question is whether the statute is vague as applied to 
defendant's conduct in this case. 
 
The rule applicable here, given the defendant's argument, 
is that a "penal statute is void for vagueness if it fails to 
give a person of ordinary intelligence notice that his 
contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute . . . ."  Id.
 
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In the context of this case, there is nothing uncertain or 
ambiguous about the statutory language making it "unlawful for 
any person to possess any firearm muffler or firearm silencer" 
that is not properly registered.  The words "muffler" and 
"silencer" relating to firearms have commonly accepted meanings.  
A "muffler" is "any of various devices to deaden the noise of 
escaping gases or vapors; something that silences," and a 
"silencer" is a "device for small arms that permits the exit of 
the projectile but reduces the noise without materially impeding 
the escape of the exploding gases; a device for silencing or 
reducing noise."  Webster's Third New International Dictionary 
1483, 2117 (1993). 
 
The statute in question plainly sets forth the conduct it 
proscribes, that is, possessing all unregistered firearm 
silencers or mufflers, including those privately manufactured.  
Thus, there was no basis to dismiss the indictment, and the 
Court of Appeals properly so ruled. 
 
And, we reject defendant's contention that the evidence was 
insufficient to convict of the attempted possession of such a 
device.  In a circular argument, defendant contends that "any 
'attempted possession' of a firearm muffler or silencer as 
charged in the indictment did not violate the statute because 
there is no obligation to register a firearm until the weapon is 
actually possessed." 
 
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An attempt is composed of the intention to commit the 
crime, and the doing of some direct act towards its consummation 
that is more than mere preparation but falls short of execution 
of the ultimate purpose.  Sizemore v. Commonwealth, 218 Va. 980, 
983, 243 S.E.2d 212, 213 (1978). 
 
The evidence in this case establishes that defendant tried 
to construct a firearm silencer using an automotive fuel filter.  
Although the device that defendant made was not a perfect 
silencer, it functioned to reduce the sound of a rifle shot.  
Defendant intended to make an operational silencer, he possessed 
the imperfect device, and he had no plans to register what he 
had made.  This is a classic case of an attempt to possess an 
unregistered firearm muffler or silencer because there was an 
intent to violate the statute accompanied by a direct act 
towards its consummation. 
 
Next, claiming there was evidence he changed his mind after 
agreeing to participate in Martin's murder, defendant contends 
the Court of Appeals erred in approving the trial court's action 
in instructing the jury that "[w]ithdrawal from the agreement or 
change of mind is no defense to the crime of conspiracy."  He 
also contends error was committed by the Court of Appeals in 
approving the trial court's refusal to give an instruction 
tendered by him stating that withdrawal from the agreement to 
 
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kill Martin or a change of mind by defendant is a defense to the 
charge of conspiracy. 
 
We hold the Court of Appeals did not err in ruling that, in 
Virginia, unlike some other jurisdictions, withdrawal is not a 
defense to conspiracy.  As we already have stated, citing Falden 
and Stevens, in Virginia the crime of conspiracy is complete 
when the parties agree to commit an offense, and no overt act in 
furtherance of the underlying crime is necessary.  Therefore, as 
the Court of Appeals stated, no action subsequent to the 
formation of the agreement can exonerate the conspirator of that 
crime.  Gray, 30 Va. App. at 733, 519 S.E.2d at 829. 
 
Finally, we find no merit in defendant's contention that 
the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the trial court's 
refusal to give instructions defining certain terms in Code 
§ 18.2-308.6, the firearm silencer statute.  As we have stated, 
the statutory terms are unambiguous.  A defendant is not 
entitled to jury instructions defining clear and unambiguous 
statutory terms.  Roach v. Commonwealth, 251 Va. 324, 346, 468 
S.E.2d 98, 111, cert. denied, 519 U.S. 951 (1996). 
 
Consequently, the judgment of the Court of Appeals will be 
Affirmed. 
 
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