Title: Rives v. Commonwealth

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

VIRGINIA: 
 
 
In the Supreme Court of Virginia held at the Supreme Court 
Building in the City of Richmond, on Thursday, the 7th day of June, 
2012. 
 
 
John Lombe Rives,                                   Appellant, 
 
against  Record No. 111492 
         Court of Appeals No. 2191-10-1 
 
Commonwealth of Virginia,                           Appellee. 
 
Upon an appeal from a judgment rendered  
by the Court of Appeals of Virginia 
 
 
Upon consideration of the record, briefs, and the argument of 
counsel for the appellant, the Court is of opinion that there is no 
reversible error in the judgment of the Court of Appeals. 
 
John Lombe Rives was arrested in Virginia Beach in June 2010 
for a violation of Code § 18.2-427, "Use of profane, threatening or 
indecent language over public airways," a Class 1 misdemeanor.  
Convicted in the general district court, he appealed to the Circuit 
Court of the City of Virginia Beach where he was again convicted 
and sentenced to 12 months in jail with 11 months suspended. 
 
The facts pertinent to this appeal are undisputed.  Rives was 
married but engaged in an adulterous affair with another woman, 
V.L.  Rives broke off the relationship, angering V.L., who 
responded by calling Rives' wife.  That call caused "a great deal 
of animosity."  Rives then called V.L. and left a series of 
telephone messages for her, using angry, vulgar, and threatening 
 
2 
language.  In an agreed statement of facts, the parties agreed to 
the accuracy of the Commonwealth's evidence of the language 
employed, and agreed that the only issue before the court was a 
legal one: whether Rives' language was both obscene and harassing, 
such as would violate Code § 18.2-427. 
 
The transcripts introduced by the Commonwealth showed that 
Rives made ten telephone calls to V.L. between 5:00 p.m. on May 28, 
2010 and 2:15 a.m. on May 29, 2010, and that he left four messages 
on V.L.'s voicemail during that period.  All were similar in tone 
and in the language used and it will suffice, for the purposes of 
this appeal, to quote only two of them: 
Hey bitch!  You want to wonder why you don't have any friends?  
Bitch!  I'm going to fuck you in the worst fucking way.  You 
understand me? . . . . 
 
Hope you're having a good time with this shit.  And what's 
going to happen is not going to be pretty. . . . 
 
 
Rives appealed to the Court of Appeals.  A single judge denied 
his appeal by a per curiam order.  His appeal was again denied by a 
three-judge panel.  Both opinions were unpublished.  The Court of 
Appeals recognized that its precedents on the subject of obscene 
telephone calls, Allman v. Commonwealth, 43 Va. App. 104, 596 
S.E.2d 531 (2004) and Lofgren v. Commonwealth, 55 Va. App. 116, 684 
S.E.2d 223 (2009),  applied the "Miller test"* for the definition of 
                     
 
* Taken from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973) 
(setting a standard whereby state laws regulating pornography may 
 
3 
obscenity, requiring the Commonwealth to prove that the content of 
the communication has as its dominant theme an appeal to the 
prurient interest in sex and is not mere angry name-calling.  The 
Court held that Rives' calls met the Miller test for obscenity 
because the evidence was sufficient to permit a rational fact-
finder to conclude that Rives' language indeed had such a dominant 
theme and was therefore obscene within the meaning of the statute.  
We awarded Rives an appeal. 
 
In Barson v. Commonwealth, 58 Va. App. 451, 711 S.E.2d 220 
(2011), the Court of Appeals expressly overruled its earlier 
decision in Allman and adopted a broader definition of obscenity.  
We reversed Barson in Barson v. Commonwealth, 284 Va. ___, ___ 
S.E.2d ___ (2012) (this day decided), but at the time Rives made 
his telephone calls in 2010, Allman was the precedent governing the 
definition of obscenity for the purposes of Code § 18.2-427 and the 
Court of Appeals did not err in applying it to the present case. 
 
We agree with the Court of Appeals' holding that the language 
Rives used violated Code § 18.2-427, even if the Miller test 
applies to the definition of obscenity, but for a slightly 
different reason. 
 
An appellate court may properly affirm a judgment appealed 
from where the court from which the appeal was taken reached the 
correct result but assigned a different reason for its holding.  
                                                                     
pass muster under the First Amendment). 
 
4 
Perry v. Commonwealth, 280 Va. 572, 579, 701 S.E.2d 431, 435-36 
(2010).  This "right result for the wrong reason" doctrine is 
inapplicable where the "right reason" cannot be fully supported by 
the evidence in the record, where the development of additional 
facts would be necessary to support it, or where the appellant was 
not on notice in the trial court that he might be required to 
present evidence to rebut it.  Whitehead v. Commonwealth, 278 Va. 
105, 115, 677 S.E.2d 265, 270 (2009).  The doctrine is applicable 
here because the case went to trial on stipulated facts, the record 
fully supports the reasoning we adopt, and Rives was on notice at 
trial that he was charged with violation of Code § 18.2-427.  We 
decide the case entirely on our interpretation of that statute. 
 
At the time of the defendant's acts in this case, the statute 
provided as follows:  
§ 18.2-427.  Use of profane, threatening or indecent language 
over public airways. – If any person shall use obscene, 
vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or 
make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or 
threaten any illegal or immoral act with the intent to coerce, 
intimidate, or harass any person, over any telephone or 
citizens band radio, in this Commonwealth, he shall be guilty 
of a Class 1 misdemeanor. 
 
The General Assembly, by this statute, proscribed three 
separate species of conduct in the use of telephone and radio 
communications, when accompanied by the intent to coerce, 
intimidate or harass:  (1) obscene language, (2) obscene 
suggestions or proposals, and (3) threats of illegal or immoral 
acts.  These three offenses are stated in the disjunctive, 
 
5 
separated by "or."  The first and second offenses are qualified by 
the word "obscene."  The third offense, proscribing threats, is not 
so limited.  We conclude that the General Assembly, having required 
that the first two offenses must meet the test of obscenity, 
deliberately chose to omit that limitation in the case of 
threatening language.  See Zinone v. Lee's Crossing Homeowners 
Ass'n, 282 Va. 330, 337, 714 S.E.2d 922, 925 (2011) (explaining 
that the Court "presume[s] that the legislature chose, with care, 
the words it use[s]" when it enacts a statute and that "when the 
General Assembly has used specific language in one instance, but 
omits that language or uses different language when addressing a 
similar subject elsewhere in the Code, we must presume that the 
difference in the choice of language was intentional") (citing 
Addison v. Jurgelsky, 281 Va. 205, 208, 704 S.E.2d 402, 404 (2011),  
Hollingsworth v. Norfolk S. Ry., 279 Va. 360, 366-67 & n.2, 689 
S.E.2d 651, 654-55 & n.2 (2010), and Halifax Corp. v. First Union 
National Bank, 262 Va. 91, 100, 546 S.E.2d 696, 702 (2001)). 
 
We conclude that the question whether language used in 
telephonic communications is obscene is immaterial in cases 
involving threats to commit illegal or immoral acts, where the 
threat is made with the intent to coerce, intimidate or harass any 
person.  Rives' language, quoted above, was clearly sufficient to 
enable a rational fact-finder to conclude that he was threatening 
V.L. with physical injury in the form of a sexual offense, with the 
 
6 
obvious intent to intimidate and harass her.  Speech of that kind 
falls outside the protection of the First Amendment.  Thorne v. 
Bailey, 846 F.2d 241, 243 (4th Cir. 1988).  State law may proscribe 
it, obscene or not. 
 
Accordingly, we affirm the conviction.  The appellant shall 
pay to the Commonwealth of Virginia two hundred and fifty dollars 
damages. 
 
Justices McClanahan and Powell took no part in the 
consideration of this case. 
 
7 
 
This order shall be certified to the Court of Appeals of 
Virginia and to the Circuit Court of the City of Virginia Beach and 
shall be published in the Virginia Reports.  
_______________ 
CHIEF JUSTICE KINSER, with whom JUSTICE LEMONS joins, dissenting. 
 
The "right result for the wrong reason" doctrine cannot be 
utilized when a defendant is not on notice at trial to present 
evidence to rebut a particular method of proof articulated by the 
Commonwealth.  Whitehead v. Commonwealth, 278 Va. 105, 115, 677 
S.E.2d 265, 270 (2009).  In the case before us, the parties 
stipulated that "the only issue presented at trial was a legal one, 
namely whether or not the language used by [John Lombe] Rives was 
both obscene and harassing, such that it would violate" Code 
§ 18.2-372.  Based on that stipulation, the trial court found the 
language used by Rives "both obscene and harassing." 
I agree with the majority that Rives was on notice that he was 
charged with violating Code § 18.2-427 by virtue of the indictment.  
But, as the majority recognizes, that statute "proscribe[s] three 
separate species of conduct."  The stipulation makes clear that the 
Commonwealth was not pursuing a theory of guilt predicated on that 
portion of the statute making it illegal for a person to "threaten 
any illegal or immoral act with the intent to coerce, intimidate, 
 
8 
or harass . . . over any telephone."  Code § 18.2-427.**  Instead 
the Commonwealth's theory was that Rives had used "obscene . . . 
language . . . with the intent to . . . harass."  Id.  Thus, Rives 
was not on notice to present evidence to rebut the charge of 
"threaten[ing] any illegal or immoral act" with the intent to 
harass.  Id.  It is inappropriate, therefore, to apply the "right 
result for the wrong reason" doctrine to affirm the trial court's 
judgment.  See Whitehead, 278 Va. at 115, 677 S.E.2d at 270. 
For the reasons stated in Barson v. Commonwealth, 284 Va. ___, 
___ S.E.2d ___ (2012) (this day decided), I conclude that the 
statutory definition of the term "obscene" set forth in Code 
§ 18.2-372 applies to the offense proscribed in Code § 18.2-427.  
Although the language Rives used in the telephone messages at issue 
was rude, vulgar, and disgusting, I also conclude that it does not 
satisfy that definition. 
Thus, I respectfully dissent and would reverse the judgment of 
the Court of Appeals of Virginia affirming the conviction. 
 
 
 
 
 
A Copy,   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Teste: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Patricia L. Harrington, Clerk 
                     
** As in effect prior to the amendment by 2010 Acts ch. 565.  
The statute currently features substantially similar language.