Title: Dearing v. Commonwealth

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

Present:  All the Justices 
 
ALFRED DEARING, JR. 
OPINION BY JUSTICE LEROY R. HASSELL, SR. 
v.  Record No. 982401 
January 14, 2000 
 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
The primary issues in this appeal are whether a circuit 
court violated a criminal defendant's federal constitutional 
right to confrontation by admitting in evidence a co-
defendant's confession and, if so, whether such error was 
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 
I. 
 
Alfred Lovell Dearing, Jr., was indicted by a grand jury 
in Alexandria for the robbery of Andre Moore and use of a 
firearm during the commission of a robbery.  He was tried 
jointly with Leroy Vernoise Dorsey, a co-defendant who 
participated in the robbery.  At the conclusion of a bench 
trial, the Circuit Court of the City of Alexandria convicted 
Dearing of the charged crimes and sentenced him to a term of 
ten years imprisonment, with six years suspended, for the 
robbery conviction and three years imprisonment for the 
firearm conviction.  After the Court of Appeals denied 
Dearing's petition for appeal, we awarded Dearing an appeal. 
II. 
 
Applying well-established principles of appellate review, 
we must consider the evidence and all reasonable inferences 
fairly deducible therefrom in the light most favorable to the 
Commonwealth, the prevailing party in the circuit court.  Derr 
v. Commonwealth, 242 Va. 413, 424, 410 S.E.2d 662, 668 (1991). 
 
On August 7, 1997, between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m., as Andre 
Moore was walking on Seminary Road in Alexandria, he observed 
a white four-door Honda Civic automobile with Maryland license 
plates.  Two people were in the car, which traveled past 
Moore.  The car stopped briefly.  Moore observed that the 
car's right taillight "was out."  Even though Moore could not 
see the face of the driver of the car, Moore "could tell [that 
the driver] had on a hat turned backwards."  The other man was 
seated on the passenger side of the car.  
 
Suddenly, Moore saw Dearing standing on the opposite side 
of Seminary Road.  Moore was able to see Dearing's face 
clearly because Dearing was standing under a street light.  
Dearing, who had a gun in his hand, "motioned" with his finger 
towards Moore.  Dearing "raised the gun up," "cocked the gun 
[and] started walking across the street."  
 
Moore "emptied [his] pocket[s]" and "dropped to the 
ground."  Dearing walked over to Moore, cursed at him, and 
directed him to "get up, get up."  Moore stood up, and as 
Dearing pointed the pistol, Moore stated, "I don't have 
 
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nothing.  I don't have nothing. . . . Don't kill me.  Don't 
kill me."  Dearing checked Moore's pockets, took his wallet, 
and told Moore "[w]elcome to D.C.  Welcome to D.C."  Dearing 
took three one dollar bills from Moore.  
 
Dearing walked across the street and got into the Honda 
Civic.  Dearing, who was a passenger in the Honda Civic, 
"yelled out the window" and laughed at Moore as the two men in 
the car rode away. 
 
After the robbery, Moore continued to walk on Seminary 
Road.  The men who had robbed Moore minutes earlier, returned 
in the Honda Civic.  Dearing opened a car door, "hopped out of 
the car," and accused Moore of concealing money from the 
robbers.  Moore "immediately dropped to the ground."  Dearing 
kicked Moore and stated, "[h]e's lying.  He's lying.  He ain't 
walking this late at night.  Got more than $3 on him.  He's 
lying.  He's lying."  When a driver of another vehicle 
traveling on Seminary Road approached the men, Dearing ran 
back to the Honda Civic, and Dearing and the driver fled. 
 
Sergeant Joshua Paige, an employee with the Defense 
Protective Service Police who was driving a van about 1:00 
a.m., observed Moore lying in the street.  Sergeant Paige 
assisted Moore and contacted the Alexandria Police Department.  
A police dispatcher issued an "area lookout" to various 
jurisdictions in northern Virginia and requested that they 
 
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"lookout" for a white, four-door Honda Civic bearing Maryland 
license plates, which had a broken rear taillight and which 
was occupied by two males.  
 
Officer Larry Agne, an Alexandria police officer, went to 
the robbery scene to assist Moore.  When Officer Agne arrived 
at the scene of the robbery, Moore provided him with a 
description of the assailants and their car.  Moore told 
Officer Agne that the assailants were traveling in a white 
Honda Civic bearing Maryland license tags.  Moore stated that 
the driver of the car wore a baseball cap which was "on 
backwards."  The person who robbed Moore was armed with a 
dark-colored semi-automatic pistol, and was wearing a gray 
tee-shirt, baggy blue pants, "some kind of necklace," and 
brown or tan work boots.  
 
Shortly after 1:00 a.m. that morning, James Wassom, a 
police officer with Arlington County, along with several other 
police officers, had been following a white, four-door Honda 
Civic because that car had been situated "the wrong way" in a 
parking lot, and the car's lights were turned off.  
Additionally, one occupant left the car, approached another 
individual, and then ran back to the car.  After Officer 
Wassom followed the car for about 30 minutes, he learned that 
the car he had been following matched the description of the 
car that had been used in the robbery of Moore.  The officers 
 
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followed the car from Arlington County into Washington, D.C., 
and then back into Arlington County. 
 
Several police officers, in at least three unmarked 
police cars, stopped the Honda Civic.  At that time, Dearing 
was driving the car, and Dorsey was in the passenger seat.  
The police officers removed the men from the car and searched 
them.  Dearing had a five dollar bill and three one dollar 
bills in his pockets.  He was wearing navy blue sweatpants, a 
gray tee-shirt, and two gold necklaces.  When Officer Wassom 
read Dearing his Miranda rights, Dearing stated, "this was the 
first time that he had been in Virginia that night." 
 
Officer Agne took Moore to the location in Arlington 
County where the police officers had apprehended Dearing and 
Dorsey.  Moore was unable to identify Dorsey.  Moore 
identified Dearing as the man who robbed him.  Moore stated, 
"[t]hat's him.  That's the guy that robbed me, but he's got 
different pants on."   
 
Paul Larson, a detective with the Arlington County Police 
Department, interviewed Dorsey.  According to Detective 
Larson, Dorsey stated "that he and his cousin, Mr. Dearing, 
had come into Virginia from Maryland in order to rob somebody.  
They drove around, saw a man walking down the street. . . .  
Mr. Dearing pointed a black handgun at him, at the victim, and 
took a small amount of money, which Mr. Dorsey believed to be 
 
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five one-dollar bills.  Then they left the victim there and 
drove around some more."  Detective Larson wrote the statement 
in his handwriting, and Dorsey signed the statement.  
 
Later that morning, Larson searched the area where the 
defendants had traveled and found a semi-automatic pistol.  At 
trial, Moore testified that the pistol that Larson found 
appeared to be the same pistol that Dearing used during the 
robbery. 
III. 
 
Code § 19.2-262.1 states: 
 
"On motion of the Commonwealth, for good cause 
shown, the court shall order persons charged with 
participating in contemporaneous and related acts or 
occurrences or in a series of acts or occurrences 
constituting an offense or offenses, to be tried 
jointly unless such joint trial would constitute 
prejudice to a defendant.  If the court finds that a 
joint trial would constitute prejudice to a 
defendant, the court shall order severance as to 
that defendant or provide such other relief justice 
requires." 
 
The defendant contends that the circuit court erred by 
granting the Commonwealth's motion for a joint trial because 
the Commonwealth failed to establish good cause required by 
Code § 19.2-262.1.  The defendant also claims that he was 
prejudiced because he could not compel his co-defendant, 
Dorsey, to testify as a witness in a joint trial.  The 
defendant's contentions are without merit. 
 
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Code § 19.2-262.1 requires the circuit court, upon a 
showing of good cause, to order joint trials for persons 
charged with participating in contemporaneous and related acts 
or occurrences.  Here, the defendant and Dorsey were charged 
with participating in contemporaneous acts.  The Commonwealth 
demonstrated good cause for the joinder of the defendants' 
trials because the trials required the presence of numerous 
witnesses who would have had to appear at two separate trials 
had the motion been denied.  Moreover, the record is devoid of 
any evidence of any actual prejudice to the defendant. 
 
The defendant claims that he would have compelled Dorsey 
to testify if the defendants had been tried separately.  
Continuing, the defendant says that his right under the Sixth 
Amendment to the federal Constitution "to be confronted with 
the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process 
for obtaining witnesses in his favor . . . " was violated by 
the joint trial.  The defendant's arguments are meritless.  
The defendant had no right to compel Dorsey, his co-defendant, 
to testify in either a joint trial or a separate trial if 
Dorsey elected to invoke his right against self-incrimination 
guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the federal Constitution.  
See United States v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115, 126 (1980) 
(absent grant of immunity, witness has privilege against 
 
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compulsory self-incrimination); see also Bruton v. United 
States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968).   
IV. 
A. 
 
The defendant asserts that the judgment confirming his 
convictions must be reversed because his co-defendant's 
statement was improperly admitted in evidence against the 
defendant, thereby violating his right to confrontation 
guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the 
United States Constitution.  The Commonwealth responds that 
the statement against the defendant was admissible and any 
error that the circuit court committed should be deemed 
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.  
 
The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States 
Constitution guarantee a defendant in a criminal prosecution 
the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him."  
U.S. Const. amend. VI; Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403-06 
(1965).  The United States Supreme Court has stated that 
"[t]he central concern of the Confrontation Clause is to 
ensure the reliability of the evidence against a criminal 
defendant by subjecting it to rigorous testing in the context 
of an adversary proceeding before the trier of fact."  
Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 845 (1990).   
 
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The Supreme Court in Lilly v. Virginia, ___ U.S. ___, 
___, 119 S.Ct. 1887, 1894 (1999), held that the admission in 
evidence of an accomplice's confession against a defendant 
violates the defendant's right to confrontation if the 
confession does not fall within a firmly rooted hearsay 
exception or contain particularized guarantees of 
trustworthiness such that the adversarial testing of the 
statement would be expected to add little, if anything, to the 
statement's reliability.  Here, we cannot conclude that 
Dorsey's confession contained particularized guarantees of 
trustworthiness or that the statement was within a firmly 
rooted hearsay exception for the Confrontation Clause as 
discussed by the Supreme Court in Lilly.  Therefore, we hold 
that the circuit court erred by admitting Dorsey's statement 
in evidence.  Thus, we must consider whether this error was 
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 
 
The Supreme Court, in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 
24 (1967), held that "before a federal constitutional error 
can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a 
belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt."  As 
the Supreme Court stated in Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 
673, 681 (1986), "an otherwise valid conviction should not be 
set aside if the reviewing court may confidently say, on the 
whole record, that the constitutional error was harmless 
 
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beyond a reasonable doubt."  See Neder v. United States, ___ 
U.S. ___, ___, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 1837 (1999). 
 
A court, when determining whether federal constitutional 
error is harmless, must consider several factors, including 
the importance of the tainted evidence in the prosecution's 
case, whether the evidence was cumulative, the presence or 
absence of evidence corroborating or contradicting the tainted 
evidence on material points, and, of course, the overall 
strength of the prosecution's case.  Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 
684; see also Lilly v. Commonwealth, 258 Va. 548, ___, ___ 
S.E.2d ___, ___ (1999); Schneble v. Florida, 405 U.S. 427, 432 
(1972); Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 254 (1969). 
 
Applying the aforementioned principles, we hold that the 
Confrontation Clause error in this case was harmless beyond a 
reasonable doubt.  Moore, who was able to see the defendant's 
face about five to seven minutes during their first encounter, 
testified unequivocally that the defendant was the man who 
robbed him.  Moore was also able to observe the defendant 
during the second encounter.  Moore identified the defendant 
as the perpetrator of the crimes within an hour of the 
robbery.  When the defendant was apprehended, he was driving 
the same car that the defendant and Dorsey used during the 
robbery.  The defendant was wearing a necklace described by 
Moore, and the co-defendant who was in the car when the police 
 
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apprehended the defendants had a baseball cap in his 
possession.  The robber took three one dollar bills from 
Moore, and when the defendant was apprehended, he had three 
one dollar bills on his person.  Moore testified that a gun 
found by the police officers looked like the gun that the 
defendant used to rob him. 
B. 
 
The defendant's argument that the evidence was not 
sufficient to support the convictions for robbery and use of a 
firearm to commit robbery is without merit.  The facts 
summarized in section IV.A. of this opinion are more than 
sufficient to support the convictions. 
V. 
 
Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment of the Court of 
Appeals. 
Affirmed. 
 
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