COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Humphreys, McCullough and Senior Judge Haley Argued at Chesapeake, Virginia

FREDDIE LEE HALL, JR. MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY v. Record No. 1626-13-1 J UDGE JAMES W. HALEY, JR. NOVEMBER 18, 2014 COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF PORTSMOUTH James C. Hawks, Judge W. McMillan Powers, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant. Christopher P. Schandevel, Assi stant Attorney General (Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Freddie Lee Hall, Jr. appeals his jury conviction for first-degree murder. He contends the trial court erred by overruling his objection to the ad mission into evidence of a receipt found in his car. Specifically, he argues the receipt was inadmi ssible hearsay and did no t constitute an adopted admission, as the trial co urt held. We hold that, assuming without deciding the trial cour t erred, any error was harmless. Accordingly, we affirm.
BACKGROUND “On appeal, ‘we review the ev idence in the light most fa vorable to the Commonwealth, granting to it all reasonable inferences fairly deducible therefrom.’” Archer v. Commonwealth, 26 Va. App. 1, 11, 492 S.E.2d 826, 831 (1997) (quo ting Martin v. Commonwealth, 4 Va. App. 438, 443, 358 S.E.2d 415, 418 (1987)).

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opin ion is not designated for publication.UNPUBLISHED- 2 - So viewed, the evidence proved that James Britt was last seen on April 11, 2011. Several days later, the police reported to Britt’s residence after his fam ily and friends were unable to contact him. The police discovered Britt’s hous e had been damaged and smelled of paint and bleach. Large pieces of carpeting and padding had been cut out of the ca rpets in the bedroom and living room. The remaining carpet had white ma rks that appeared to be bleach stains and portions of the walls appeared to have been recen tly painted. Stains that appeared to be blood spatter were also on the walls a nd ceiling. Later testing confirme d that blood spatter on some of the walls and doors were beneath th e fresh paint. Furniture inside the house had been moved. A trash bag in the garage contained pieces of Britt’s teeth, a .9 millimeter FC Luger cartridge casing, Britt’s blood-stained clothing , bottles of cleaning supplies, Britt’s driver’s license which had been cut in pieces, Britt’s wallet, and a sma ll slip of paper linked to a Florida company with which appellant was associated. A paint can bear ing appellant’s fingerprint was in the garage along with a piece of carpet padding with Britt’s blood on it. Paint from the can was consistent with the fresh paint on the walls inside Britt’s house. Britt’s bl ood and appellant’s fingerprints were also located inside the residence. A bullet matching the casing from the trash bag was embedded in Britt’s bedroom wall and had been covered with putty. The police also found appellant’s locked vehicle in Britt’s drivewa y. Three of Britt’s cars were missing from the property. Britt operated a car business and had worked w ith appellant. In the weeks prior to his disappearance, Britt had told his employees and friends that he no longer planned to work with appellant because appellant had done poor work and owed him money. Br itt told the witnesses that he had informed appellant th at he no longer wished to work w ith him. One witness testified he observed appellant and Britt engage in a heat ed argument soon before Britt’s disappearance.- 3 - Days before Britt’s disappearance, he told two witnesses, Scott Lunde and Arthur Veras, that appellant had arrived at hi s residence carrying a crowbar. Lunde explained Britt appeared upset by the encounter and “didn’ t like people to . . . come in to [his] house talking business, especially late at night.” The police found a crowbar in a vehicle owned by appellant. The vehicle was located in Florida, where appellant lived, and one of Britt’ s neighbors had seen it at Britt’s residence shortly before Britt’s disappearance. The police also recovered from appellant numerous titles to cars owned by Britt. Appellant claimed Britt had so ld or given him the car titles. Names other than Britt’s appeared as the seller on some of the titles. A handwriting expert te stified appellant could not be eliminated as the au thor of the seller signatures on the titles. Two of Britt’s cars were found at appellant’s girlfriends’ houses. At one of the residences , the police also found a piece of carpet on appellant’s lawnmower. The carpet was damp and smelled of bleach. The fibers matched the carpet in Britt’s residence. Inside appellant’s vehicle, which had been locked and parked on Britt’s property, the police found a receipt for .9 millimeter FC Luge r caliber cartridges from a gun shop. During the testimony of Mary T. McCurdy of the police forensic services unit, the Commonwealth introduced the receipt. The receipt was dated prio r to the date the victim was last seen and was for ammunition that matched the casing and a bu llet found at the victim’s residence. Over appellant’s hearsay objec tion, the trial court allowed the rece ipt to be introduced at trial. Although appellant denied ever owning a gun, hi s car contained ammunition and gun cleaning supplies. Appellant exhibited an injury to his fore head at an April 21, 2011 interview with the police. During the interview, appellant admitted having twice entered Britt ’s residence during the week of April 11, 2011 . At first, he claimed se veral times that he had only gone through the garage- 4 - to the kitchen to retrieve car keys . Later, however, af ter one of the detectiv es told appellant his DNA had been located in the livin g room, appellant told a differen t version of th e events which included his going into the liv ing room to check for mail. 1 Pastor K. Irby testified appellant was enrolled in ministerial classes at his church in Florida during April 2011. Irby explained that on the weekend of April 8, 2011, appellant informed him that he would miss the following week’s classe s because “he had been called up on military maneuvers.” Later, when he returned to class, appellant told Irby he had been in the Middle East. In fact, appellant had not gone to the Middle East and specifically misrepresented his whereabouts to his pastor.
ANALYSIS “In this case, as in all others , we seek to decide cases, ‘on the best and na rrowest ground available’ from the record.” Ki rby v. Commonwealth , 50 Va. App. 691, 698 n.2, 653 S.E.2d 600, 603 n.2 (2007) (quoting Miles v. Commonwealth, 274 Va. 1, 2, 645 S.E.2d 924, 925 (2007) (Kinser, J., concurri ng) (citations omitted) ). A defendant “is entitled to a fair, but not perfect, trial, as there are no perfect trials.” Blevins v. Comm onwealth, 267 Va. 291, 297, 590 S.E.2d 365, 368 (2004). Where a defendant allege s the trial court erred concerni ng hearsay testimony, we may assume without deciding the error occurred, appl y a harmless error analys is, and affirm if we conclude the error was harmless. Adams v. Co mmonwealth, 275 Va. 260, 277, 657 S. E.2d 87, 97 (2008).

1 In fact, the police had not found appellant ’s DNA in the living room. Detective P. Grover testified he told appellant they found DNA “[t]o see if he would change his story, to see if it would bring any other stories out.” Grover confirmed that is “a co mmon police interrogation technique.”- 5 - Our Supreme Court has adopted th e test of the United States Supreme Court for determining non-constitutional harmless error. Billips v. Commonwea lth, 274 Va. 80 5, 810, 652 S.E.2d 99, 102 (2007). That test has be en stated as follows: “If, when all is said and done, the conviction is sure that the error did not influence the jury, or had but slight effect, the verdict and the judgment should stand . . . . But if one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whol e, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected . . . . If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.” Clay v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 253, 260, 546 S.E.2d 72 8, 731-32 (2001) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764- 65 (1946)). “Under this stan dard, non-constitutional error is harmless if other evidence of guilt is so ‘overwhelming’ an d the error so insignificant by comparison that we can conclude the error ‘failed to have any “substantial influence” on the verdict.’” Schwartz v. Schwartz, 46 Va. App. 145, 159, 616 S.E.2d 59, 66 (2005) (quoting United States v. Lane, 474 U. S. 438, 450 (1986)). In this case, the contested evid ence linked appellant to the ca rtridge casing found in the bag in Britt’s garage and from there to the concealed bullet found embedded in Britt’s bedr oom wall. However, in addition to the receipt the police found in appellant’s car, the police also found ammunition and weapon cleaning eq uipment, which independently established appellant likely had access to some type of firearm, despite his contention that he never owned a firearm. Furthermore, because Britt’s body was never discovered, his ca use of death was undetermined. The evidence proved appellant also posse ssed a crowbar, which he admitted having carrie d to Britt’s residence. The prosecution suggested a crowbar could also have be en used to kill Britt. Additionally, the jury was pres ented with an enormous amount of evidence linking appellant to Britt’s murder and its atte mpted concealment. The Comm onwealth presen ted evidence- 6 - demonstrating possible mo tives appellant had to kill Britt, in cluding their recen t argument and the possibility of financial gain. Ap pellant possessed numerou s items of Britt’s pers onal property, and the evidence of forged titl es suggested appellant ob tained the titles with out Britt’s permission. Appellant’s DNA and fing erprints were located throughout the residence, and appellant’s inconsistent accounts of his entry into the house called his version of the events in to question. Appellant was in possession of the bleached carpeting that had be en removed from Britt’s house and his fingerprints were found on a paint can matchi ng the paint used to cover the walls after blood had been spattered on them, su ggesting appellant was the pers on who removed Britt’s body and attempted to conceal evidence of Britt’s murder. Finally, appellant was shown to have lied to his pastor regarding his whereabouts at the time of Britt’s disappearance , indicating he tried to conceal the fact that he was in Virginia at the tim e the crime was committed. The focus of the trial was whether appellant kill ed Britt. The question before the jury was not by what method – gunshot or crowbar or otherwise – but, rath er, did appellant kill Britt. No issue before the jury was firearm related. The contested receipt wa s of minimal evid ential value; even if error, that error was no n-constitutional and thus harmless upon the massive evidence of guilt otherwise adduced. Upon review of the entire record, we conclude that the evid ence of the receipt for ammunition “had little , if any, tendency to pr ejudice the jury against [appellant] because it was so inconsequential when viewed in comparison to the overwhelming evid ence of [appellant’s] guilt.” Hanson v. Commonwealth, 14 Va. App. 173, 176, 416 S.E.2d 14, 16 (1992). Considering the extensive amount of direct an d circumstantial evidence linking appe llant to the murder, it plainly appears “that the parties have had a fair trial on the merits and substantial jus tice has been reached.”- 7 - Lavinder v. Commonwealth, 12 Va. App. 10 03, 1005, 407 S.E.2d 910, 911 (1991) ( en banc ). Accordingly, any e rror by the trial co urt was harmless. For the foregoing reasons , we affirm the judgment of the trial court. Affirmed.