COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Chief Judge Fitzpatrick, Judges Willis and Elder 

Argued by teleconference 

RICHARD W. DURRER 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1601-97-2 JUDGE LARRY G. ELDER 

 APRIL 21, 1998 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF GREENE COUNTY 

Lloyd C. Sullenberger, Judge 

 J. Thomas Love, Jr., for appellant. 

 Ruth Ann Morken, Assistant Attorney General 

(Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief), 

for appellee. 

 Richard W. Durrer (appellant) appeals his convictions of 

obstruction of justice and assault and battery. He contends that 

the trial court erred when it excluded evidence regarding the 

demeanor and conduct of one of the Commonwealth's witnesses 

shortly after appellant's arrest. For the reasons that follow, 

we affirm. 

 Appellant was charged with obstruction of justice and 

assault and battery following an encounter with Investigator Troy 

W. Buttner and Deputy Stuart R. Snead on the morning of 

November 6, 1996. The evidence at appellant's trial proved that 

Investigator Buttner and Deputy Snead arrived at appellant's auto 

body shop after receiving information from appellant's cousin 

 

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

designated for publication. 
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that appellant was engaged in a physical altercation with his 

former girlfriend, Angela S. Jarrell. After the officers 

attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Jarrell to leave the scene, 

appellant emerged from his shop carrying an aluminum baseball 

bat. Both Investigator Buttner and Deputy Snead testified that 

appellant verbally threatened to use the bat to force Jarrell to 

leave his property and walked toward her and the two officers 

while carrying the bat. The officers testified that, after 

appellant failed to comply with their order to drop the bat and 

continued his approach, Deputy Snead sprayed appellant in the 

face with pepper spray. According to the officers, appellant 

responded by swinging the bat and striking Deputy Snead's right 

hand. Investigator Buttner then struck appellant about three 

times with an expandable baton, and Deputy Snead followed by 

tackling appellant to the ground. After a fifteen-to-twenty 

second struggle, during which appellant resisted their efforts to 

subdue him, the officers handcuffed appellant and took him into 

custody. During his altercation with the officers, appellant 

sustained injures that required medical attention later that day. 

 Appellant's cousin and Jarrell testified on appellant's 

behalf and gave accounts that conflicted with the testimony of 

the officers. They testified that the officers assaulted 

appellant with the pepper spray and the baton after he failed to 

comply with their order to drop the bat. However, they testified 

that appellant never threatened to use the bat and never swung 
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it. 

 At the end of his case-in-chief, appellant sought to 

introduce the testimony of James M. Hatmaker, which was proffered 

for the record. Hatmaker would have testified that he observed 

Deputy Snead execute a traffic stop of Jarrell a few minutes 

after appellant was taken into custody. According to Hatmaker, 

Deputy Snead angrily approached Jarrell as she sat in her car, 

yelled at her, and pulled forcefully on her driver-side window 

until it shattered. The trial court ruled that Hatmaker's 

testimony was inadmissible because it was irrelevant. 

 "Evidence is relevant if it has any logical tendency to 

prove an issue in a case." Goins v. Commonwealth, 251 Va. 442, 

461, 470 S.E.2d 114, 127, cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 222 (1996). 

Evidence that tends to show that "'a witness is biased and his 

testimony unreliable because it is induced by considerations of 

self-interest'" is "always relevant." Banks v. Commonwealth, 16 

Va. App. 959, 962, 434 S.E.2d 681, 683 (1993) (quoting Barker v. 

Commonwealth, 230 Va. 370, 376, 337 S.E.2d 729, 733 (1985)). 

"Evidence of a crime or act that relates directly to the 

credibility of a witness and the weight that should be given to 

his or her testimony is admissible." Id. at 963, 343 S.E.2d at 

683 (citing Adams v. Commonwealth, 201 Va. 321, 326, 111 S.E.2d 

396, 399-400 (1959)). 

 Evidence of specific acts of misconduct is 

generally not admissible in Virginia to 

impeach a witness' credibility. However, 

where the evidence . . . is relevant to show 

that a witness is biased or has a motive to 
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 fabricate, it is not collateral and should be 

admitted. 

Id. (citations omitted). 

 We hold that the trial court did not err when it concluded 

that Hatmaker's testimony was not relevant to the issue of Deputy 

Snead's credibility. Deputy Snead's testimony concerned the 

actions of appellant, not Jarrell. As such, the evidence of 

Deputy Snead's alleged misconduct toward Jarrell is relevant at 

appellant's trial only if the deputy would be motivated to 

justify or conceal his behavior toward Jarrell by falsely 

accusing appellant of striking him with the baseball bat and 

resisting the officers' efforts to arrest him. See Banks, 16 Va. 

App. at 964, 434 S.E.2d at 684 (holding that evidence that the 

Commonwealth's witness distributed drugs while investigating the 

defendant for drug-related activity was admissible to show that 

the witness had a motive to falsely implicate the defendant in 

order to conceal his own crimes). However, the deputy's alleged 

incident with Jarrell occurred later in time and at a different 

location than his altercation with appellant. Although Deputy 

Snead had an interest in convincing his superiors that his 

decision to shatter Jarrell's driver-side window was warranted by 

the circumstances, he could not achieve this end by giving a 

false account of appellant's conduct at a different time and 

place. Because the proffered evidence of Deputy Snead's 

unprovoked aggression toward Jarrell could not logically provide 

the deputy with a "motive to implicate [appellant] in order to 
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conceal his own [misconduct]," we cannot say that the trial 

court's exclusion of this evidence was erroneous. Id. at 964, 

434 S.E.2d at 684. 

 For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the convictions of 

obstruction of justice and assault and battery. 

 Affirmed.