COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Elder, Fitzpatrick, and Senior Judge Duff 

Argued at Alexandria, Virginia 

MICHAEL ERVIN TRAVERS 

v. Record No. 1970-94-4 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY JUDGE CHARLES H. DUFF 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA MARCH 5, 1996 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF FAIRFAX COUNTY 

Rosemarie Annunziata, Judge 

 Andrew P. Wright (Briglia & Wright, on 

brief), for appellant. 

 Michael T. Judge, Assistant Attorney General 

(James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney General, on 

brief), for appellee. 

 Michael Travers (appellant) appeals his conviction for 

murder in the first degree. He argues that the trial court erred 

in excluding his statements to the police and the records of 

certain criminal convictions of the decedent, Gerald Moore. We 

find no reversible error in the trial court's rulings and affirm 

appellant's conviction. 

 I. 

 "On appeal, we review the evidence in the light most 

favorable to the Commonwealth, granting to it all reasonable 

inferences fairly deducible therefrom." Martin v. Commonwealth, 

4 Va. App. 438, 443, 358 S.E.2d 415, 418 (1987). 

 Upon returning home on the night of February 5, 1994, 

 

 *Pursuant to Code § 17-116.010, this opinion is not 

designated for publication. 
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appellant's wife found the dead body of Gerald Moore on the sofa 

in the apartment she shared with appellant and their two 

children. Moore had sustained fourteen stab wounds, three of 

them fatal. Two of the wounds punctured his heart. Moore's 

blood alcohol content was .40 percent. A toxicologist testified 

that such an amount of alcohol in Moore's bloodstream would have 

induced a state approaching "general paralysis." 

 At about 10:00 p.m. that night, appellant called his father 

and said he had stabbed a man. Appellant appeared at his 

father's house shortly thereafter. When police officers arrested 

appellant there later, they found blood on his clothes, on his 

hands, and on a knife sheath on his belt. 

 Appellant testified that he and Moore met for the first time 

at a convenience store in the early evening of February 5, 1994. 

 Appellant and Moore went to appellant's apartment for the 

purpose of drinking alcohol. Appellant testified that at the 

apartment he and Moore had argued, and that Moore attacked him. 

Appellant said he remembered stabbing Moore with a knife once in 

self-defense. 

 II. 

 Before appellant testified in his behalf and had his 

credibility challenged on cross-examination, he asked the trial 

court to permit him to introduce statements he made to the police 

following his arrest. The statements contained admissions that 

appellant had stabbed Moore, but that he had acted in self-
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defense. The court ruled the statements hearsay and excluded 

them. 

 "'Hearsay evidence is defined as a spoken or written 

out-of-court declaration or nonverbal assertion offered in court 

to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein." Hamm v. 

Commonwealth, 16 Va. App. 150, 155, 428, S.E.2d 517, 521 (1993). 

Appellant sought to introduce his statements to prove that he 

acted in self-defense. Thus, appellant offered the statements 

for the truth of the matters asserted therein, and the statements 

were hearsay. 

 "As a general rule, hearsay evidence is incompetent and 

inadmissible. . . . The party seeking to rely upon an exception 

to the hearsay rule has the burden of establishing 

admissibility." Neal v. Commonwealth, 15 Va. App. 416, 420-21, 

425 S.E.2d 521, 524 (1992). On appeal, appellant does not assert 

that any exception to the hearsay rule permitted the introduction 

of his statements during his case in chief. Moreover, "when 

proffered by the party who made the statement, such a statement 

is generally not admissible." King v. Commonwealth, 18 Va. App. 

57, 59, 441 S.E.2d 704, 705 (1994). In the absence of an 

applicable exception to the hearsay rule, the trial judge did not 

err in refusing to permit appellant to introduce the statements.1

 

 1We find no merit to appellant's argument that he should 

have been permitted to introduce the statements at trial because 

the Commonwealth did so at the preliminary hearing. The 

Commonwealth is not required to introduce the same evidence at 

trial as at the preliminary hearing, nor is the Commonwealth 

barred at trial from objecting to such evidence. 
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 After the parties had rested and while the trial court was 

discussing jury instructions with counsel, appellant's attorney 

requested leave to reopen his case to permit appellant to testify 

about his statements to the police. Although counsel previously 

had declined the opportunity to present rebuttal evidence, she 

contended that the evidence was necessary to support her planned 

closing argument that appellant asserted self-defense "early on." 

 The trial court refused appellant's request. 

 "A defendant may introduce his or her own prior consistent 

statements when the prosecution suggests that the defendant has a 

motive to falsify, alleges that the defendant's testimony is a 

recent fabrication, or attempts to impeach the defendant with a 

prior inconsistent statement." Id. at 59, 441 S.E.2d at 705. To 

be admissible, however, the prior statements must have been "made 

at a time when their ultimate effect and operation could not have 

been foreseen." Skipper v. Commonwealth, 195 Va. 870, 876, 80 

S.E.2d 401, 405 (1954). See also Faison v. Hudson, 243 Va. 397, 

404, 417 S.E.2d 305, 309 (1992). 

 The decision whether to permit the introduction of further 

testimony after both parties have rested their cases is addressed 

to the sound discretion of the trial court and will not be 

reversed on appeal absent an abuse of that discretion. Williams 

v. Commonwealth, 4 Va. App. 53, 77, 354 S.E.2d 79, 92 (1987). We 

cannot say the trial court abused its discretion in denying 

appellant's motion to reopen his case. 
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 III. 

 The trial judge refused to admit records of Moore's Maryland 

and Florida convictions because the proffered documents did not 

comply with Code § 8.01-389. Code § 8.01-389(A)(1) provides: 

The records of any judicial proceeding and any other official 

record of any court of another state or country, or of the United 

States, shall be received as prima facie evidence provided that 

such records are authenticated by the clerk of the court where 

preserved to be a true record, and similarly certified by a judge 

of that court. 

For purposes of Code § 8.01-389, "the terms 'authenticated' and 

'certified' are basically synonymous . . . . Authentication is 

merely the process of showing that a document is genuine and that 

it is what its proponent claims it to be." Owens v. 

Commonwealth, 10 Va. App. 309, 311, 391 S.E.2d 605, 607 (1990). 

 The Maryland and Florida conviction orders were not 

certified by a judge. Thus, the orders did not comply with the 

requirements of Code § 8.01-389, and the trial judge did not err 

in excluding them. 

 The trial court also excluded the Virginia record of Moore's 

conviction of disorderly conduct arising from an incident on 

November 16, 1993. The court admitted, however, the testimony of 

Officer Connor about Moore's conduct that resulted in the 

disorderly conduct charge. 

 Even if the Virginia disorderly conduct conviction should 
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have been admitted, the error was harmless in light of Officer 

Connor's testimony about the event. Connor testified that on 

November 16, 1993, he observed Moore swing a piece of wood like a 

baseball bat in the direction of several individuals fleeing from 

a convenience store parking lot. Moore was intoxicated and 

angry. Connor's testimony illustrated Moore's propensity for 

violent or turbulent behavior more graphically than the bare 

conviction order possibly could. In addition, the trial court 

did admit orders reflecting Moore's thirteen convictions for 

public drunkenness. Because it appears from the record that any 

conceivable error did not affect the verdict, see Lavinder v.

Commonwealth, 12 Va. App. 1003, 1005, 407 S.E.2d 910, 911 (1991) 

(en banc), we affirm appellant's conviction. 

 Affirmed.