Case Title: Blanton v. Commonwealth

Citation: 

Docket Number: 091878

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2010-09-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present: Hassell, C.J., Koontz, Kinser, Goodwyn, and Millette, 
JJ., and Carrico and Lacy, S.JJ. 
 
DONNA L. BLANTON 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 091878 
SENIOR JUSTICE HARRY L. CARRICO 
 
 
 
September 16, 2010 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
In this appeal involving convictions for murder in the 
first degree (Code § 18.2-32) and use of a firearm in the 
commission of a felony (Code § 18.2-53.1), we decide whether the 
circuit court erred in failing to hold that the prosecutor made 
improper statements during his rebuttal to the closing argument 
of the defense.  Finding that the circuit court did not err, we 
will affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Virginia. 
 
The record shows that in the early morning hours of October 
16, 2003, Taylor Blanton (Taylor), a Virginia State Trooper, was 
shot and killed while still in bed in his home located on 
approximately twelve acres of land at Ruther Glen in Caroline 
County.  His wife, Donna L. Blanton (Donna), was charged with 
the murder and weapon offenses, and she was convicted of both by 
a jury in the Circuit Court of Caroline County. 
 
In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals reversed 
both convictions and remanded the case to the circuit court, 
holding that the trial court erred in permitting the 
Commonwealth to use all of its peremptory strikes against five 
white females without supplying a gender-neutral reason.  
Blanton v. Commonwealth, Record No. 1955-05-02, slip op. at 6 
(April 17, 2007).  Upon remand, the circuit court ordered a 
change of venue to the Circuit Court of the City of Virginia 
Beach.  
 
In a jury trial held in Virginia Beach, Donna was convicted 
of both offenses, and the jury fixed her punishment at life 
imprisonment and a fine of $100,000 on the murder charge and 
three years imprisonment on the weapons charge.  The circuit 
court imposed the sentences fixed by the jury and entered its 
final order on September 3, 2008. 
 
In a per curiam order, a judge of the Court of Appeals 
refused Donna’s petition for appeal, and a three-judge panel of 
the court by order upheld the refusal for the reasons stated in 
the order.  We awarded Donna this appeal. 
BACKGROUND 
 
Donna and Taylor began dating after she was divorced from 
her former husband, Glen Udart, and in 1999 she moved into 
Taylor’s home.  Donna and Taylor were married about four years 
later, on April 14, 2003.  
 
According to the story Donna told at the time, she arose 
before Taylor about 6:00 a.m. on the morning of October 16, 
2003, and she was in the bathroom when she heard gunshots.  She 
exited the bathroom and called 911.  She reported that an 
 
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intruder had broken into her home and shot her husband.  When 
police arrived, Donna stated that she was in the bathroom 
brushing her teeth∗ when she heard gunshots and that she exited 
the bathroom and saw the intruder running out of the house.  She 
said that the intruder dropped his gun on the bedroom floor and 
that she picked it up and fired it at the intruder as he was 
running down the driveway.  She then placed the gun on the 
center island in the kitchen. 
 
Police retrieved the gun from the center island in the 
kitchen when they arrived.  They recovered six shell casings 
from the bedroom, which was located on the first floor of the 
house, two shell casings from the yard outside, and two bullets 
from the bedroom.  Four more bullets were found in Taylor’s body 
during an autopsy.  He died from “gunshot wounds of the back.” 
 
Forensic analysis determined that all the bullets and shell 
casings had been fired from the gun retrieved from the center 
island in the kitchen.  In addition, the gun perfectly fitted 
into an imprint in a towel found in a linen closet outside the 
bedroom door.  The gun had actually been purchased by Taylor and 
used at a state police firing range for several years prior to 
his death. 
                     
 
∗ Later the same day, Taylor’s sister, Debbie Thomas, 
arrived on the scene and Donna asked her for “a mint or a piece 
of gum because she had not brushed her teeth all day.” 
 
 
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Police investigation disclosed nothing indicating the entry 
of an intruder into the residence on the morning in question.  
The first officer to arrive saw no tracks other than his own in 
the heavy dew on the ground.  There were no signs of forced 
entry.  One window was open some three or four inches above the 
sill but a cobweb was intact in the open space and there were no 
signs inside or on the ground below the window of anything out 
of order.  No door or window in the house appeared to be damaged 
and there was no dirt on any floor.   
 
The Blanton family kept three dogs in their household that 
“barked at anybody[,]” including “[f]amily members, . . . 
[e]verybody” who “came to the door” or “walked on the driveway.”  
On the morning in question, no one heard the dogs bark until the 
police arrived on the scene in response to Donna’s 911 call. 
 
The record discloses that Donna experienced serious 
difficulty with her finances.  She was employed for about three 
years by a community action program in Caroline County but was 
“fired” on July 9, 2002, for “gross insubordination.”  She filed 
a claim against the agency with the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission, which determined on March 30, 2003 that the claim 
was “not founded.” 
 
Before Taylor and Donna were married, they engaged in 
conversations at softball games with his ex-wife, Julie Henry, 
with whom they were on friendly terms.  The two women also 
 
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talked frequently on the telephone, and Donna told Julie Henry 
she was expecting a settlement for the loss of her prior 
employment.  In one conversation before Donna’s marriage, she 
was crying and stated that Taylor “wanted her to spend [the 
settlement money] fixing up [his] house . . . and since they 
weren’t married . . . she didn’t think that she should have to 
spend that money on the house.”  In a conversation after Donna’s 
marriage, she “seemed . . . aggravated” about not having a joint 
checking account with Taylor and said “she was going to do 
something about that.” 
 
Donna told two other friends, Nancy Barnett and Susan 
Jenkins, that she had filed a lawsuit against her former 
employer, had won the case, and was expecting to receive her 
money soon.  Donna told Taylor’s nephew, John Thomas, that she 
would be receiving “an undisclosed settlement . . . large in 
nature” as a result of her discharge by her former employer and 
that she and Taylor talked about using the money she expected 
from the settlement to purchase “a beach house in Nags Head as 
well as a new tractor for Taylor.”  Yet there was never any 
settlement, there was never any lawsuit, and Donna never got “a 
penny out of” her former employer. 
 
In August 2003, Taylor purchased a John Deere tractor from 
a local equipment dealer.  He paid a deposit of $200.00 and said 
he would pay the balance later.  The tractor was delivered to 
 
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his home.  On August 27, he gave the dealer a check for 
$16,644.56 drawn on SunTrust Bank and signed by Donna.  Taylor 
asked that the check be held for a few days, when the funds 
would be available to pay it.  The dealer talked with Donna 
several times in September of 2003 and she kept saying she would 
soon be receiving funds to cover the check.  She also said that 
Taylor was “getting upset and blaming her” for the delay in 
paying the money. 
 
The dealer finally cashed the check, and it was returned on 
September 14 for insufficient funds in the bank to cover it.  
The dealer notified Taylor that the check had been returned and 
Taylor delivered to the dealer a faxed copy of a letter 
supposedly from SunTrust Bank, purportedly signed by one “R. 
Montgomery,” and stating that the funds from a cancelled 
cashier’s check dated October 6, 2003, would be deposited in 
Donna’s account by October 10.  The dealer never received 
anything from the bank. 
 
On October 14, 2003, Donna called the dealer and said she 
was leaving the bank and was on the way to the dealer’s office 
to pay in full for the tractor.  The dealer never saw or heard 
from Donna again and never received any money and therefore 
repossessed the tractor with the full purchase balance still 
unpaid.  It turned out that SunTrust Bank had no one on its 
staff named “R. Montgomery,” that the letterhead on which the 
 
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faxed letter was written was not something used by SunTrust 
Bank, and that the handwriting on the letter was Donna’s. 
 
Donna was involved in gambling.  Taylor’s daughter, 
Katherine, who lived in the Blanton household, saw Donna on the 
computer “[a]ll the time” with “casino gambling games” on the 
screen.  When Donna heard Katherine coming, she “minimize[d]” 
the screen “so [one] can’t see” what is on it. 
 
Donna traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to gamble.  
She told her friend Nancy Barnett, who accompanied her there “a 
time or two,” that “she was real lucky” and would “win a lot.”  
She told her friend Susan Jenkins, who was asked by Donna to 
accompany her to Atlantic City but “never did get to go,” that 
“she was a high roller and that she would call a man there at 
the casino any time she wanted to go up; and he would have a 
suite ready for her, a limousine, [and] tickets to any show she 
wanted to go to.” 
 
If Donna ever won “a lot” at gambling, it obviously was not 
sufficient to keep her out of financial trouble.  When she moved 
into Taylor’s home, her two daughters from her previous 
marriage, Chelsea and Danielle Udart, also moved.  They used one 
of the two bedrooms on the second floor and Taylor’s daughter, 
Katherine, used the other.  Taylor also had a son, but he lived 
with his mother. 
 
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On weekdays in the spring of 2003, when Chelsea and 
Danielle arrived home from school, one of them would collect the 
mail and then await a call from Donna.  She had them go through 
the mail and read off the return address on each piece and she 
would instruct the girls where the mail should be placed.  She 
would have them hide “specific pieces” of mail, such as those 
from credit card companies and banks, in her briefcase, which 
she kept under the television table in her bedroom.  After 
Taylor’s murder, the police found batches of Donna’s financial 
records in three other places, her purse, a briefcase in her 
automobile, and under female clothing in a dresser drawer. 
 
The hiding of mail abated during the summer months of 2003, 
but when Chelsea arrived home one summer day she found a 
“warrant in debt, judgment, and garnishment summons” for Donna 
posted on the front door of the Blanton home.  The hiding of 
mail began again in the fall of 2003.  Danielle estimated that 
she placed 250 to 300 pieces of mail in Donna’s briefcase in  
the fall of 2003. 
 
Donna told Danielle “every day” not to “tell anybody” about 
hiding the mail “because bad things would happen.”  When 
Danielle asked “what would happen,” Donna stated that Taylor 
“would find out . . . there would be a divorce,” and “we would 
be homeless and penniless.” 
 
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Donna also placed “[q]uite a few” mail hold cards at the 
post office in Ruther Glen.  These cards permitted customers to 
have mail held from three to thirty days.  Donna visited the 
post office on occasion to pick mail up and at other times to 
place new holds.  Taylor did not visit the post office. 
 
During several months preceding Taylor’s murder, Donna 
wrote a series of checks that were all returned by the bank for 
insufficient funds.  For the entire month of September 2003, she 
had a negative balance in her checking account, and the bank 
closed the account on October 3, 2003.  In May of 2003, Donna 
entered into a series of payday loans, which were payable on the 
next payday and which she had “going until a loan was defaulted 
[i]n late October” 2003. 
 
There was little Donna could have done in October of 2003 
to improve her financial situation.  She had received a 
discharge in bankruptcy in May of 1998 and would not have been 
eligible to receive another discharge for six years, or until 
May 2004. 
 
On the evening of Taylor’s viewing after his death, Donna 
telephoned Julie Henry, Taylor’s ex-wife, and asked about his 
two children.  Julie Henry stated that they “weren’t doing that 
well.”  Donna replied:  “Well, they’ll be okay.  They’ll get 
Taylor’s Social Security, they’ll go to school for free and 
they’ll get lots of money because he was killed in the line of 
 
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duty.”  When Julie Henry said she could not see how Taylor’s 
death could be deemed to have been in the line of duty, Donna 
responded:  “What else could it be?”  And on the day of Taylor’s 
funeral, she told her daughters, Chelsea and Danielle, “[w]ell, 
at least you’ll have your own rooms now.”   
 
Finally, we note one of the conversations Taylor and Donna 
had with Julie Henry at a softball game shortly before his 
marriage to Donna.  He stated that “if he died Donna would be a 
rich woman.” 
 
Donna did not testify at trial. 
ANALYSIS 
 
In his rebuttal to defense counsel’s closing argument, the 
prosecutor made two statements that are the subjects of four 
assignments of error made by Donna.  Assignments 1 and 2 relate 
to the first statement and 3 and 4 to the second statement. 
The First Statement 
The prosecutor said this to the jury: 
 
The defense did put in some evidence.  They put in the 
three lab reports, and they had all of this here.  You 
better believe that if there were one shred of evidence in 
all of this that proved that the defendant was not guilty 
that [defense counsel] would have presented it to you, and 
he didn’t.  
 
 
Donna objected to the argument, and the circuit court 
overruled the objection.  Donna now argues that the prosecutor’s 
 
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statement “was an improper comment on the Defendant’s failure to 
present evidence, including [her] failure to testify.” 
 
However, we do not reach the merits of Donna’s argument in 
support of her first two assignments of error.  “Unless a 
defendant has made a timely motion for a cautionary instruction 
or for a mistrial, we will not consider [her] assignments of 
error alleging that improper remarks were made by the 
prosecutor.”  Schmitt v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 127, 148, 547 
S.E.2d. 186, 200 (2001); see also Sheppard v. Commonwealth, 250 
Va. 379, 394-95, 464 S.E.2d 131, 140-41 (1995); Breard v. 
Commonwealth, 248 Va. 68, 82, 445 S.E.2d 670, 679 (1994); Cheng 
v. Commonwealth, 240 Va. 26, 38, 393 S.E.2d 599, 605-06 (1990). 
 
Donna did not make a motion in the circuit court for a 
cautionary instruction or for a mistrial.  Hence, she has waived 
any claim of error she may have had with respect to the First 
Statement.  Rule 5:25; see, e.g., Schmitt, 262 Va. at 148, 547 
S.E.2d at 200-01 (2010). 
The Second Statement 
 
In his closing argument, defense counsel stated that after 
Taylor’s funeral, Donna returned to the house she and Taylor had 
lived in but she was arrested within seven days and did not 
receive the house nor did she get “one penny” as a result of 
Taylor’s death.  In rebuttal, the prosecutor made this 
statement:  “She was in jail ten days after [Taylor’s death] 
 
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happened.  That’s why she didn’t get one penny.  That’s why she 
didn’t get the house.” 
 
Defense counsel objected to the prosecutor’s reference to 
Donna’s presence in jail and moved for a mistrial or a curative 
instruction.  Defense counsel likened the comment about Donna 
being in jail to allowing an accused to appear before a jury 
while in shackles or prison garb and, hence, was “overly 
prejudicial.” 
 
The trial judge remarked that defense counsel had “sort of 
opened that door” by his statement that Donna had been arrested 
seven days after Taylor’s murder.  The prosecutor stated that he 
had not said that Donna had “been in jail continuously since 
that time,” only that she was in jail ten days after the murder.  
The prosecutor also said he may have misstated the number of 
days as ten rather than seven between the murder and the arrest. 
 
The circuit court denied the defense motion for a mistrial.  
However, the trial judge reminded the jurors that he had 
previously instructed them that “what the attorneys say is not 
evidence,” that it “is only their recollection of the evidence,” 
that “[y]ou are the triers of fact,” and “[y]ou heard the 
evidence based upon your collective memories as to what, in 
fact, is the evidence.” 
 
Resuming his rebuttal argument, the prosecutor stated to 
the jury:  “Let me correct myself.  Of course, she didn’t get 
 
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the house.  Of course, she didn’t get any money.  She was 
arrested for the murder of Taylor Blanton seven days after he 
was murdered.”  
 
We hold that the circuit court did not err in denying 
defense counsel’s motion for a mistrial.  The denial is 
supported by established principles of law, as follows: 
The decision whether to grant a motion for mistrial lies 
within a trial court’s exercise of discretion.  When a 
motion for mistrial is made, based upon an allegedly 
prejudicial event, the trial court must make an initial 
factual determination, in the light of all the 
circumstances of the case, whether the defendant’s rights 
are so indelibly prejudiced as to necessitate a new trial.  
Unless we can say that the trial court’s determination was 
wrong as a matter of law, we will not disturb its judgment 
on appeal. 
 
Green v. Commonwealth, 266 Va. 81, 102, 580 S.E.2d 834, 846 
(2003) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). 
 
We cannot say that the circuit court’s determination was 
wrong as a matter of law.  Considering the innocuous nature of 
the prosecutor’s comment under all the circumstances of the 
case, the circuit court’s cautionary instruction to the jury, 
and the prosecutor’s corrective statement, Donna’s rights were 
clearly not so indelibly prejudiced as to necessitate a new 
trial.  Accordingly, we will not disturb the circuit court’s 
judgment. 
CONCLUSION 
 
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For the reasons assigned, we will affirm the judgment of 
the Court of Appeals. 
Affirmed. 
 
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