STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA
 

SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS
 

FILED 

State of West Virginia, April 13, 2015 Plaintiff Below, Respondent RORY L. PERRY II, CLERK 

SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS 

vs) No. 14-0737 (Berkeley County 13-F-161) OF WEST VIRGINIA 

Krystal M.,
 

Defendant Below, Petitioner
 

MEMORANDUM DECISION 

Petitioner Krystal M., by counsel B. Craig Manford, appeals the Circuit Court of Berkeley 

County’s June 6, 2014, order revoking her probation and re-imposing her sentence of one to five 

years in prison for child abuse causing serious bodily injury.1 The State, by counsel Cheryl 

Saville, filed a response in support of the circuit court’s order. 

This Court has considered the parties’ briefs and the record on appeal. The facts and legal 

arguments are adequately presented, and the decisional process would not be significantly aided 

by oral argument. Upon consideration of the standard of review, the briefs, and the record 

presented, the Court finds no substantial question of law and no prejudicial error. For these 

reasons, a memorandum decision affirming the order of the circuit court is appropriate under Rule 

21 of the Rules of Appellate Procedure. 

In May of 2013, a Berkeley County Grand Jury indicted petitioner on two counts of child 

abuse causing bodily injury, one count of child abuse causing serious bodily injury, and one count 

of gross child neglect creating substantial risk of serious bodily injury. As part of a plea 

agreement, petitioner pled guilty to one count of child abuse causing bodily injury in violation of 

West Virginia Code § 61-8D-3(a) and the State dismissed the remaining counts. On March 31, 

2014, the circuit court sentenced petitioner to one to five years in prison, but suspended all but 

four months of petitioner’s sentence and placed her on five years of supervised probation. 

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“We follow our past practice in . . . cases which involve sensitive facts and do not utilize 

the last names of the parties.” State ex rel. West Virginia Dep’t of Human Servs. v. Cheryl M., 177 

W. Va. 688, 689 n.1, 356 S.E.2d 181, 182 n.1 (1987) (citations omitted). See also State v. 

Edward Charles L., 183 W. Va. 641, 645 n.1, 398 S.E.2d 123, 127 n.1 (1990) (“Consistent with 

our practice in cases involving sensitive matters, we use the victim’s initials. Since, in this case, 

the victim . . . [is] related to the [petitioner], we have referred to the [petitioner] by his last name 

initial.” (citations omitted)). 

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Petitioner agreed to certain terms and conditions of probation, which included that it was a 

“necessity that there be no contact with Bradley Silver.”2 

On May 5, 2014, petitioner’s probation officer filed a petition for revocation of probation 

alleging that petitioner had sixty-three telephone conversations with Bradley Silver while she was 

incarcerated.3 The circuit court held a probation revocation hearing on June 2, 2014, during which 

petitioner admitted contacting Mr. Silver sixty-three times in violation of the terms and conditions 

of her supervised probation. Accordingly, the circuit court re-imposed the original sentence with 

credit for time served. It is from this order that petitioner appeals. 

On appeal, petitioner argues that she was subject to only a sixty-day term of incarceration 

pursuant to West Virginia Code § 62-12-10(a)(2) because her sixty-three violations constituted 

only a technical violation of the terms of her probation. Specifically, petitioner asserts that the 

specific condition prohibiting her from contacting Mr. Silver was not designed to protect a victim 

because Mr. Silver did not pose any danger to petitioner’s children. 

As this Court has previously stated: 

“When reviewing the findings of fact and conclusions of law of a circuit 

court sentencing a defendant following a revocation of probation, we apply a 

three-pronged standard of review. We review the decision on the probation 

revocation motion under an abuse of discretion standard; the underlying facts are 

reviewed under a clearly erroneous standard; and questions of law and 

interpretations of statutes and rules are subject to a de novo review.” Syllabus 

Point 1, State v. Duke, 200 W.Va. 356, 489 S.E.2d 738 (1997). 

Syl. Pt. 1, State v. Inscore, 219 W.Va. 443, 634 S.E.2d 389 (2006). 

Upon our review, we find no abuse of discretion in the circuit court’s decision to revoke 

petitioner’s probation. West Virginia Code § 62-12-10(a)(1)(C) states in part, “if the court or 

judge finds reasonable cause exists to believe that the petitioner violated a special condition of 

probation designed to protect the public or victim; the court or judge may revoke the suspension 

of imposition or execution of sentence . . . .” As part of the terms and conditions of petitioner’s 

probation, the circuit court clearly stated that it was a “necessity that there be no contact with 

Bradley Silver.” Here, it is undisputed that petitioner acknowledged that she contacted Mr. Silver 

sixty-three times while she was incarcerated at Eastern Regional Jail. Further, we disagree with 

petitioner’s argument that her violations should only be considered a “technical violation” 

because petitioner’s children were not in danger of any actual harm. A plain reading of West 

Virginia Code § 62-12-10(a)(1)(C), requires that the “special condition of probation was designed 

either to protect the public or a victim.”(Emphasis added). The circuit court found that the nocontact provision was “one of the most important conditions, . . . and really focused on the 

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Mr. Silver was petitioner’s live-in boyfriend. 

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As a term and condition of her supervised probation, petitioner also agreed to be 

incarcerated for four months at Eastern Regional Jail. 

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protection of the children.” West Virginia Code § 62-12-10 clearly authorizes revocation of 

probation under these circumstances because the no-contact provision was designed to protect the 

children. Therefore, this Court declines to find that the circuit court abused its discretion in 

revoking petitioner’s probation. 

Petitioner further argues that because her phone calls to Mr. Silver were “technical 

violations” of the terms of her probation, she was only subject to a sixty-day term of incarceration 

for her first probation violation pursuant to West Virginia Code § 62-12-10(a)(2). Even if this 

amounted to “technical violations” of the terms and conditions of petitioner’s probation, we 

would find no abuse of the circuit court’s discretion. West Virginia Code § 62-12-10(a)(2) grants 

a circuit court the discretion to “revoke the suspension of imposition or execution of sentence” 

following a third probation violation. As noted above, petitioner admitted to sixty-three separate 

probation violations. These sixty additional probation violations are well in excess of the statutory 

minimum required to revoke petitioner’s probation. Thus, we find no merit in petitioner’s 

suggestion that she should have been confined for an additional period of sixty days. 

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm. 

Affirmed. 

ISSUED: April 13, 2015 

CONCURRED IN BY: 

Chief Justice Margaret L. Workman 

Justice Robin Jean Davis 

Justice Brent D. Benjamin 

Justice Menis E. Ketchum 

Justice Allen H. Loughry II 

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