COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Baker, Coleman and Elder 

Argued at Salem, Virginia 

RONNIE JAMES GOODE 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1393-95-3 JUDGE SAM W. COLEMAN III 

 OCTOBER 15, 1996 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

 FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF LYNCHBURG 

Mosby G. Perrow, III, Judge 

 Vanessa E. Hicks, Assistant Pubic Defender 

(Office of the Public Defender, on brief), 

for appellant. 

 John K. Byrum, Jr., Assistant Attorney 

General (James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney 

General, on brief), for appellee. 

 Ronnie James Goode was convicted in a bench trial for 

possession of cocaine with intent to distribute in violation of 

Code § 18.2-248. Goode contends that the evidence is 

insufficient to prove that he had the intent to distribute. We 

find that the evidence is sufficient and affirm the defendant's 

conviction. 

 On appeal, we review the evidence and all reasonable 

inferences fairly deducible therefrom in the light most favorable 

to the Commonwealth. Higginbotham v. Commonwealth, 216 Va. 349, 

352, 218 S.E.2d 534, 537 (1975). 

 Where evidence of an intent to distribute is 

entirely circumstantial, "all necessary 

circumstances proved must be consistent with 

guilt and inconsistent with innocence and 

 

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

designated for publication. 
- 2 - 

exclude every reasonable hypothesis of 

innocence." Thus, the sufficiency of 

circumstances to prove an intent to 

distribute depends upon the inferences 

permissible from those circumstances. . . . 

If, however, other evidence also tends to 

prove the element of the crime required to be 

proven, the probative weight of the inferred 

fact need be no greater than that required of 

any other evidence admitted for consideration 

by the trier of fact, so long as all of the 

evidence proves the element beyond a 

reasonable doubt. 

Morton v. Commonwealth, 13 Va. App. 6, 9-10, 408 S.E.2d 583, 

584-85 (1991) (citations omitted). 

 The defendant contends that the circumstantial evidence, 

viewed in its most favorable light, proves that a drug sale was 

taking place between the defendant and the driver of the vehicle. 

 He argues, however, that the evidence does not prove which of 

them was the seller and it does not exclude the hypothesis that 

he was purchasing cocaine, rather than distributing it. We 

disagree. 

 The evidence presented was that the defendant was seen by 

Officers Riley and Sawyers running from the porch of a known drug 

house and entering the passenger side of a car. When the 

officers approached the vehicle, they observed a twenty-dollar 

bill resting on the seat between the defendant and the driver. 

The defendant had his left hand clinched resting on his left 

knee. Officer Riley asked the defendant to open his hand and he 

did so, revealing a plastic baggie containing a white, rock-like 

substance which in a field test proved to be cocaine. The 
- 3 - 

defendant was arrested and a search incident to arrest revealed 

$110 in mixed bills in the defendant's right front pocket. 

 The defendant contends that this evidence alone is not 

sufficient to prove intent to distribute beyond a reasonable 

doubt. The defendant relies upon the decisions in Rice v. 

Commonwealth, 16 Va. App. 370, 429 S.E.2d 879 (1993) (holding 

possession of large amount of cash does not prove intent); 

Morton, 13 Va. App. 6, 408 S.E.2d 583 (1991) (holding defendant's 

approach of car did not exclude his being the buyer in 

transaction); and Stanley v. Commonwealth, 12 Va. App. 867, 869, 

407 S.E.2d 13, 15 (1991) (holding amount of cocaine possessed too 

small to have intent to distribute) to support his contention. 

The circumstantial evidence in this case is not limited, as it 

was in Rice, Morton, and Stanley, to a single item of evidence of 

possessing a large amount of money, approaching a car, or having 

an amount of cocaine too small to distribute. Here a combination 

of factors preponderate to prove that the defendant was the 

seller, not the purchaser. "While no single piece of evidence 

may be sufficient, the 'combined force of many concurrent and 

related circumstances, each insufficient in itself, may lead a 

reasonable mind irresistibly to a conclusion.'" Stamper v. 

Commonwealth, 220 Va. 260, 273, 257 S.E.2d 808, 818 (1979) 

(quoting Karnes v. Commonwealth, 125 Va. 758, 764, 99 S.E. 562, 

564 (1919)), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 972 (1980). 

 Officer Riley testified at trial without objection as to the 
- 4 - 

custom in the area and as to this particular location for selling 

drugs. He testified that 

 [w]hat they do there is they wait for a 

customer to drive up and somebody will come 

out from the outside of the porch area of the 

house, come out to the vehicle, and make a 

drug transaction, and then the vehicle will 

leave. If nobody's there at that time the 

vehicle would either go by -- go to another 

location. 

The defendant's actions at the time he was arrested matched this 

description of how drug sales were made. Moreover, the 

circumstances of the defendant leaving the house when a car 

approached, engaging in a drug transaction in which he had a rock 

of cocaine in his hand and a twenty-dollar bill was on the seat 

between him and the driver, and having $110 in mixed bills in his 

right front pocket, are sufficient to prove that he was the 

seller, rather than the buyer. The Commonwealth's evidence 

proved much more than that the defendant was present while a drug 

transaction occurred in an area that had a reputation for a high 

crime area, Riley v. Commonwealth, 13 Va. App. 494, 412 S.E.2d 

724 (1993), as he exited a known crack house and engaged in a 

drug sale in a manner typical of drug dealers in that area. 

 Furthermore, Officer Riley testified that the driver of the 

vehicle told him at the scene that the defendant was attempting 

to sell him cocaine. Most importantly, Officer Sawyers testified 

that the defendant told him, when interviewed at the station 

house, that the twenty-dollar bill belonged to the driver of the 

vehicle and that the driver wanted to buy drugs. The defendant's 
- 5 - 

admission supports the inference that he was the seller in the 

transaction. 

 The evidence is sufficient to sustain the defendant's 

conviction for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. 

Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the trial court. 

Affirmed.