Case Title: Commonwealth v. Sands

Citation: 

Docket Number: 010071

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2001-11-02T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  All the Justices 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
v.  Record No. 010071  OPINION BY JUSTICE CYNTHIA D. KINSER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   November 2, 2001 
VICTORIA SHELTON SANDS 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
 
A jury convicted the defendant, Victoria Shelton 
Sands, of the first degree murder of her husband, Thomas 
Lee Sands, and of the use of a firearm in the commission of  
murder.  The Court of Appeals of Virginia, finding that the 
trial court erred in refusing to give the defendant’s 
requested jury instruction on self-defense, reversed the 
convictions and remanded the case for a new trial.  Sands 
v. Commonwealth, 33 Va. App. 669, 682, 536 S.E.2d 461, 467 
(2000).  This appeal by the Commonwealth followed.  
 
Although the defendant had suffered considerable 
physical abuse at the hands of her husband before fatally 
shooting him, we find no evidence of an overt act 
indicative of the deceased’s imminent intention to kill or 
seriously harm his wife at the time of the shooting, such 
as to make a self-defense instruction appropriate.  Thus, 
we will reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and 
reinstate the defendant’s convictions. 
 
 
FACTS 
 
 
Thomas Lee Sands began beating his wife approximately 
two years after they were married in 1983.  Over time, the 
abuse grew more severe, finally becoming a daily 
occurrence.  The defendant repeatedly asked her husband for 
a divorce or suggested that they go their “different ways,” 
but he always refused her attempts to end their 
relationship and responded by beating her again.  The 
defendant believed that she could not leave because Thomas 
threatened to kill her and her family if she did so.  After 
one such episode in July 1998, Thomas kept his wife hostage 
in their residence for three weeks. 
 
In August 1998, the defendant sought the assistance of 
her parents in an attempt to have her husband arrested for 
his illegal activities.1  In the defendant’s words, “If I 
could get Tommy busted on all this stuff, . . . I could get 
him out of my life.”  However, shortly after the 
defendant’s mother spoke with a law enforcement officer 
about her daughter’s situation, the defendant’s parents 
were critically injured in an automobile accident, 
resulting in their hospitalization.  The defendant was 
                     
1 During the last eight to ten years of the marriage, 
Thomas was not lawfully employed; he instead sold cocaine, 
marijuana, and “bootleg” whiskey.  He also regularly 
carried a gun. 
 
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afraid to take any other action herself because she 
believed her husband would kill her if he discovered her 
plans. 
 
On the evening of August 22, 1998, the defendant 
returned home after visiting her injured parents in the 
hospital.  At that time, according to the defendant, Thomas 
“went into a rage,” beat her, and threatened to kill her.  
Around 11:00 a.m. the next morning, a neighbor observed the 
defendant walk out of her kitchen door onto the back porch 
with a gun in her hand.  The gun was raised in a “semi-
fire” position.  The defendant claims she was trying to get 
the gun out of the house to hide it for her own protection. 
 
The defendant’s husband, however, followed her onto 
the back porch where the couple again fought.  During that 
scuffle, Thomas pushed his wife into a sink, opened a door, 
and threw her down several concrete steps onto the ground.  
At some point during that incident, he seized the gun that 
the defendant had been carrying, and while she was lying on 
the ground with Thomas sitting on top of her, he fired two 
shots into the ground near her.  The couple then went back 
inside the house, where Thomas demonstrated how to cock the 
gun, placed it on a counter between them, and taunted the 
defendant to “pick the gun up and shoot [him].”  The fight 
 
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ended temporarily when the couple’s four-year-old son 
entered the room. 
 
Soon thereafter, the defendant’s aunt, Sallie Hodges, 
arrived at the house.  Hodges described her niece as “real 
sad,” with a bruise on the side of her face.  Although the 
defendant had planned to return to the hospital to care for 
her parents, Thomas would not allow her to leave with 
Hodges.  He kept pacing the floor and pointing his finger 
at Hodges, while stating, “I’ll kill you and your whole 
family. . . .  I’ve knocked off a few and I can knock off a 
few more.”  He likewise would not allow his wife to leave 
with her brother who had also stopped at the house. 
 
For the rest of the day, Thomas drank beer, used 
cocaine, physically abused his wife, and threatened to kill 
her.  He would intermittently watch television in the 
bedroom for short periods of time, but always returned to 
the assault upon his wife.  The defendant admitted that she 
also used some cocaine that day. 
 
Around 10:00 p.m., the defendant telephoned Hodges and 
asked her to come over and get the couple’s son.  While the 
defendant was on the telephone with Hodges, a neighbor 
stopped by the house and agreed to take the child to 
Hodges’ home.  The defendant testified that she wanted her 
 
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son out of the house because she “sensed” that her husband 
was going to kill her. 
 
The defendant then telephoned her sister-in-law, 
Angela Shelton, and asked her to come to the house.  After 
that telephone call, Thomas beat his wife again.  During 
that episode, which the defendant described as “the 
longest,” Thomas used his fists and the butt of a gun to 
attack her.  He also pushed the barrel of the gun up into 
his wife’s nose. 
When Shelton arrived, the defendant came to the door 
to let her into the house.  Shelton observed that the 
defendant was crying and looked upset.  The defendant asked 
her sister-in-law to accompany her into the bathroom, where 
Shelton helped the defendant pull up her shirt.  Upon 
seeing her injuries, the defendant “started shaking really, 
really bad, and her eyes got real wild eyed[,]” according 
to Shelton.  Referring to her husband, the defendant then 
stated, “He’s the devil.  I got to get this devil out of my 
house.  He’s evil.  He [is] gonna kill me.”  The defendant 
then ran “out of the bathroom and the door of the living 
room, . . . came back to the kitchen, . . . opened the 
cabinet door, . . . got the gun, and . . . went to the 
bedroom” where she shot her husband five times while he was 
lying in bed, watching television.  When asked at trial if 
 
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she said anything to her husband before shooting him, the 
defendant answered, “No sir.”  She also testified that her 
husband said only, “What are you doing[?]”  After shooting 
her husband, the defendant walked back to the kitchen, put 
the gun on a bar, and telephoned “911.”  The first law 
enforcement officer to arrive at the scene received a call 
about the incident at approximately 11:00 p.m. 
 
Several hours after the shooting, an emergency room 
physician examined the defendant.  That doctor observed 
“multiple bruises and contusions throughout [the 
defendant’s] body,” especially in the areas of her upper 
arms and flanks.  However, x-rays of her skull, spine, and 
chest were normal.  A police officer who investigated the 
shooting and saw the defendant at the scene reported that 
he observed bruising on the defendant’s arms and that her 
nose “was kind of twisted to the side.” 
 
At trial, the defense proffered the following jury 
instruction on self-defense: 
 
 
THE COURT INSTRUCTS THE JURY that if you believe 
that the defendant was without fault in provoking or 
bringing on the difficulty, and if you further believe 
that the defendant reasonable [sic] feared, under the 
circumstances as they appeared to her, that she was in 
danger of being killed or that she was in danger of 
great bodily harm, then the killing was in self-
defense, and you shall find the defendant not guilty. 
 
 
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The circuit court denied the instruction on the basis that 
there was “insufficient evidence for a self-defense 
instruction.” 
ANALYSIS 
 
The question to be decided in this appeal is whether 
the defendant was entitled to a jury instruction on self-
defense.  Because the trial court refused to grant the 
instruction proffered by the accused, we view the facts in 
the light most favorable to the defendant.  Commonwealth v. 
Alexander, 260 Va. 238, 240, 531 S.E.2d 567, 568 (2000).  
However, an instruction is proper only if supported by more 
than a scintilla of evidence.  Commonwealth v. Donkor, 256 
Va. 443, 445, 507 S.E.2d 75, 76 (1998).  If the instruction 
is not applicable to the facts and circumstances of the 
case, it should not be given.  Hatcher v. Commonwealth, 218 
Va. 811, 813-14, 241 S.E.2d 756, 758 (1978) (citing Banner 
v. Commonwealth, 204 Va. 640, 647, 133 S.E.2d 305, 310 
(1963)).  Thus, it is not error to refuse an instruction 
when there is no evidence to support it.  See LeVasseur v. 
Commonwealth, 225 Va. 564, 590-92, 304 S.E.2d 644, 658-59 
(1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1063 (1984). 
 
The principles governing a plea of self-defense are 
well-established.  Self-defense is an affirmative defense 
to a charge of murder, and in making such a plea, a 
 
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“defendant implicitly admits the killing was intentional 
and assumes the burden of introducing evidence of 
justification or excuse that raises a reasonable doubt in 
the minds of the jurors.”  McGhee v. Commonwealth, 219 Va. 
560, 562, 248 S.E.2d 808, 810 (1978).  The “bare fear” of 
serious bodily injury, or even death, however well- 
grounded, will not justify the taking of human life.  
Stoneman v. Commonwealth, 66 Va. (25 Gratt.) 887, 900 
(1874).  “There must [also] be some overt act indicative of 
imminent danger at the time.”  Vlastaris v. Commonwealth, 
164 Va. 647, 652, 178 S.E. 775, 776 (1935).  See also 
Yarborough v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 971, 975, 234 S.E.2d 
286, 290 (1977); Mercer v. Commonwealth, 150 Va. 588, 597, 
142 S.E. 369, 371 (1928).  In other words, a defendant 
“must wait till some overt act is done[,] . . . till the 
danger becomes imminent.”  Vlastaris, 164 Va. at 652, 178 
S.E. at 777.  In the context of a self-defense plea, 
“imminent danger” is defined as “[a]n immediate, real 
threat to one’s safety . . . .”  Black’s Law Dictionary 399 
(7th ed. 1999).  “There must be . . . some act menacing 
present peril . . . [and] [t]he act . . . must be of such a 
character as to afford a reasonable ground for believing 
there is a design . . . to do some serious bodily harm, and 
imminent danger of carrying such design into immediate 
 
8
execution.”  Byrd v. Commonwealth, 89 Va. 536, 539, 16 S.E. 
727, 729 (1893). 
 
In holding that the trial court erroneously refused to 
instruct the jury on self-defense, the Court of Appeals 
construed the term “imminent” to mean something less than 
“immediate.”  Sands, 33 Va. App. at 678, 536 S.E.2d at 465 
(quoting Sam v. Commonwealth, 13 Va. App. 312, 325, 411 
S.E.2d 832, 839 (1991)).  Applying its view of that term, 
the Court of Appeals concluded that, “[u]nder the facts of 
this case, the fact finder could reasonably have concluded 
that [the defendant] was without fault in beginning the 
altercation, reasonably apprehended she was in imminent 
danger of death or serious bodily harm and, thus, was 
justified in shooting her husband to prevent him from 
killing her or further inflicting serious bodily harm upon 
her.”  Sands, 33 Va. App. at 679, 536 S.E.2d at 465. 
 
We agree that the defendant reasonably believed that 
she was in danger of serious bodily harm or death.  
Nevertheless, that reasonable belief is not dispositive of 
the issue before us in this appeal.  The question here is 
whether the circumstances immediately surrounding the 
killing, specifically, the actions of the defendant’s 
husband at that time, were sufficient to create a 
reasonable belief of an imminent danger which had to be 
 
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met.  The Court of Appeals did not squarely address this 
requirement of an overt act. 
 
Even when viewed in the light most favorable to the 
defendant, the evidence fails to reveal any overt act by 
her husband that presented an imminent danger at the time 
of the shooting.  The last episode between the defendant 
and her husband occurred after the defendant telephoned 
Shelton.2  Then, sufficient time elapsed for Shelton to 
arrive at the couple’s home, and for the defendant to view 
the extent of her injuries while in the bathroom with 
Shelton, walk from the bathroom to the living room door, 
turn around and proceed back into the kitchen, retrieve a 
gun from a cabinet, and walk back into the bedroom where 
her husband was reclining on the bed, watching television.  
At that moment, the only reaction by the defendant’s 
husband was his question, “What are you doing[?]”  While we 
do not doubt the defendant’s genuine fear for her life or 
minimize the atrocities inflicted upon her, we cannot point 
to any evidence of an overt act indicating imminent danger, 
or indeed any act at all by her husband, when she shot him 
five times while he reclined on the bed.  Nor did the Court 
                     
2 The defendant acknowledges on brief that the last 
assault occurred within an hour of the shooting. 
 
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of Appeals cite to any such evidence.  Thus, the defendant 
was not entitled to an instruction on self-defense. 
The requirement of an overt act indicative of imminent 
danger ensures that the most extreme recourse, the killing 
of another human being, will be used only in situations of 
necessity.  “The plea of self-defense is a plea of 
necessity and the necessity must be shown to exist or there 
must be shown such reasonable apprehension of the immediate 
danger, by some overt act, as to amount to the creation of 
necessity.”  Vlastaris, 164 Va. at 651, 178 S.E. at 776. 
CONCLUSION 
 
For these reasons, we will reverse the judgment of the 
Court of Appeals and enter final judgment reinstating the  
convictions. 
Reversed and final judgment. 
JUSTICE KOONTZ, dissenting. 
I respectfully dissent.  The facts in this case as 
recited by the majority fully support the majority’s 
conclusion that Victoria Shelton Sands “reasonably believed 
that she was in danger of serious bodily harm or death” as 
a result of “the atrocities inflicted upon her” by her 
husband on the day Sands shot and killed her husband.  
Nevertheless, the majority finds “no evidence of an overt 
act indicative of the deceased’s imminent intention to kill 
 
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or seriously harm his wife at the time of the shooting such 
as to make a self-defense instruction appropriate.”  In my 
view, the majority decides as a matter of law an issue that 
was properly within the sole province of the jury. 
I have no quarrel with the majority’s recitation of 
the law applicable to this case.  Clearly, “[w]hether the 
defendant [acted] in self-defense depends on whether [she] 
reasonably believed that it was necessary to [act] as [she] 
did in order to save [her] own life or avoid serious bodily 
harm.”  Boone v. Commonwealth, 195 Va. 708, 712, 80 S.E.2d 
412, 414 (1954).  The majority is also correct that the 
evidence must show some overt act by the deceased 
indicative of imminent danger.  Vlastaris v. Commonwealth, 
164 Va. 647, 652, 178 S.E.2d 775, 777 (1935).  “These are 
ordinarily questions for the jury.”  Boone v. Commonwealth, 
195 Va. at 712, 80 S.E.2d at 414.  And, a self-defense 
instruction is proper if supported by more than a scintilla 
of evidence.  See Commonwealth v. Donkor, 256 Va. 443, 445, 
507 S.E.2d 75, 76 (1998). 
The majority concludes that the temporary cessation in 
the victim’s brutalization of Sands removed her from 
“imminent danger” and, thus, she was not entitled to have 
the jury instructed on self-defense and to have the jury 
consider the reasonableness of her perception that her life 
 
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was in imminent danger when she shot the victim.  The 
majority reaches this conclusion by reasoning that imminent 
danger means “a[n] immediate, real threat to one’s safety.”  
In other words, the majority, in effect, concludes that 
because there was no objective simultaneous threat to 
Sands' life, her acknowledged subjective belief that she 
was in imminent danger when she shot her husband could not 
have been reasonable. 
In my view, the pattern of brutalizing acts committed 
upon Sands over the preceding twenty-four hours, coupled 
with the repeated threats to kill her, constituted the 
necessary “overt act” on the part of the victim such as to 
make a self-defense instruction appropriate.  Although the 
victim was reclining in bed at the moment of the killing, a 
jury could have concluded that Sands' belief that she 
nevertheless remained in imminent danger of death or 
serious bodily harm was reasonable under the circumstances.  
As noted by the majority, the victim “would intermittently 
watch television in the bedroom for short periods of time, 
but always returned to the assault upon his wife.”  There 
is no evidence that this pattern would not continue so as 
exclude a reasonable conclusion that at any moment the 
victim would resume beating Sands and placing her life in 
 
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danger.  Thus, there was clearly more than a scintilla of 
evidence to support a self-defense instruction. 
Accordingly, I would hold that the trial court erred 
in not instructing the jury on the elements of self-
defense, and for that reason, I would affirm the judgment 
of the Court of Appeals reversing Sands' conviction and 
remanding the case for a new trial. 
 
 
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