COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Elder, Frank and Humphreys 

Argued by teleconference 

WILLIAM EARL PETTEWAY 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1679-00-2 JUDGE LARRY G. ELDER 

 JUNE 19, 2001 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF RICHMOND 

Thomas N. Nance, Judge 

 Patricia P. Nagel, Assistant Public Defender 

(Gregory W. Franklin, Assistant Public 

Defender; Office of the Public Defender, on 

brief), for appellant. 

 Thomas M. McKenna, Assistant Attorney General 

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

for appellee. 

 

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opinion is not 

designated for publication.

 William Earl Petteway (appellant) appeals from his bench 

trial conviction for grand larceny. On appeal, he contends the 

circumstantial evidence was insufficient to prove both that any 

money was stolen and, even if it was, that he was the criminal 

agent. We hold the evidence, although circumstantial, excludes 

all reasonable hypotheses of appellant's innocence, and we 

affirm his conviction. 

 A conviction for grand larceny requires proof of a taking, 

not from the person of another, of goods having a value of $200 
or more. Code § 18.2-95(ii); see Commonwealth v. Taylor, 256 

Va. 514, 518, 506 S.E.2d 312, 314 (1998). On appeal, we examine 

the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, 

granting to its evidence all reasonable inferences fairly 

deducible therefrom. Martin v. Commonwealth, 4 Va. App. 438, 

443, 358 S.E.2d 415, 418 (1987). The credibility of a witness, 

the weight accorded the testimony, and the inferences to be 

drawn from proven facts are matters solely for the fact finder's 

determination. Long v. Commonwealth, 8 Va. App. 194, 199, 379 

S.E.2d 473, 476 (1989). 

 "Circumstantial evidence is as competent and is entitled to 

as much weight as direct evidence, provided it is sufficiently 

convincing to exclude every reasonable hypothesis except that of 

guilt." Coleman v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 31, 53, 307 S.E.2d 

864, 876 (1983). "[T]he Commonwealth need only exclude 

reasonable hypotheses of innocence that flow from the evidence, 

not those that spring from the imagination of the defendant." 

Hamilton v. Commonwealth, 16 Va. App. 751, 755, 433 S.E.2d 27, 

29 (1993). 

 We hold first that appellant failed to preserve for appeal 

his argument that the evidence was insufficient to prove that 

Bowles had any money or that the money was stolen rather than 

lost or mislaid. Rule 5A:18 provides that "[n]o ruling of the 

trial court . . . will be considered as a basis for reversal 

unless the objection was stated with the grounds therefor at the 

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time of the ruling, except for good cause shown or to enable the 

Court of Appeals to attain the ends of justice." Under this 

rule, a motion to strike the evidence offered to prove one 

element of an offense is insufficient to preserve for appeal a 

challenge to another element of that same offense. Redman v. 

Commonwealth, 25 Va. App. 215, 220, 487 S.E.2d 269, 272 (1997). 

Here, appellant's motion to strike covered only the sufficiency 

of the evidence to prove that appellant, rather than someone 

else, took the money from the victim's purse during the period 

of approximately four hours in which it was unattended. 

Appellant never argued to the trial court that the evidence was 

insufficient to prove the victim received the money, and he 

never contended the evidence indicated the money was lost or 

mislaid rather than stolen. 

 Nor does the ends of justice exception require us to 

consider these arguments on appeal. To invoke the ends of 

justice exception, an appellant must show "that he or she was 

convicted for conduct that was not a criminal offense[,] or the 

record must affirmatively prove that an element of the offense 

did not occur." Id. at 221-22, 487 S.E.2d at 272-73. Here, the 

evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the 

Commonwealth, established that Bowles received in a bank 

envelope money for the sale of her car and that she had the 

money and the bank envelope in her possession at 3:15 p.m. when 

she placed the money in her wallet and the envelope in the 

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trash. The mere fact that she later questioned whether she may 

accidentally have thrown the money away with the envelope does 

not prove she may have mislaid it; she checked the only two 

places she could have put the money and found the money in 

neither of those two places. The only reasonable conclusion 

flowing from this evidence was that the money was stolen rather 

than lost or mislaid. 

 Appellant properly preserved for appeal his challenge to 

the sufficiency of the evidence to prove he was the criminal 

agent, but we conclude the circumstantial evidence was, in fact, 

sufficient to prove his criminal agency. If the trial court 

believed the testimony of Bowles, which it was entitled to do, 

appellant was the only person who had both access to the money 

and an opportunity to steal it without being observed. 

 Bowles placed the money in her purse at 3:15 p.m. and found 

it missing a little over four hours later when she was preparing 

to pay appellant for his work. In the interim, only Steve Husky 

and appellant were in her house. The house had an alarm on the 

closed front door, and Bowles testified she would have heard the 

alarm if anyone else had entered during that time. None of the 

windows in the house were open that day. Because Bowles was 

with Husky the entire time he was in the house, she knew he did 

not take the money and that it was still in her purse when Husky 

departed. 

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 When appellant subsequently arrived to clean Bowles' 

upholstery, she left him alone on the first floor of her house 

for over an hour while she worked in her second-floor office. 

In cleaning the upholstery, appellant used water from Bowles' 

kitchen sink and, in order to get to the sink, appellant had to 

pass the open door to Bowles' bedroom, where the purse 

containing the $2,300 was located. Thus, appellant was the only 

person with both the means and opportunity to steal the money, 

and the only reasonable hypothesis flowing from the 

circumstantial evidence is that the money was stolen and he was 

the criminal agent. 

 Appellant argues on brief that evidence that another 

person's torn blank checks were found in Bowles' kitchen trash 

can was not relevant to whether appellant took Bowles' money and 

was not sufficient evidence to support his conviction. We note 

that appellant registered no relevance objection in the trial 

court to the admission into evidence of the checks or related 

testimony. We also note that the presence of the torn checks in 

Bowles' kitchen trash can was relevant to corroborate Bowles' 

testimony that appellant moved from the living room to the 

kitchen and, therefore, had an opportunity to enter her bedroom 

to take the money from her purse. Although this evidence was 

not relevant to prove appellant's propensity to steal from 

customers of the cleaning service, see Jennings v. Commonwealth, 

20 Va. App. 9, 18-19, 454 S.E.2d 752, 756-57 (1995), appellant 

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did not ask that the evidence be admitted for a limited purpose, 

see Crider v. Commonwealth, 206 Va. 574, 578, 145 S.E.2d 222, 

225 (1965) (holding that failure to request that admission be 

limited to particular purpose constitutes waiver of objection). 

Further, no evidence indicates that the trial court--which is 

presumed to know the law, see Yarborough v. Commonwealth, 217 

Va. 971, 978, 234 S.E.2d 286, 291 (1977), and to disregard 

prejudicial or inadmissible evidence, see Hall v. Commonwealth, 

14 Va. App. 892, 902, 421 S.E.2d 455, 462 (1992) (en banc) 

--considered it for an improper purpose, and the remaining 

evidence was sufficient to support appellant's conviction. 

 For these reasons, we affirm appellant's grand larceny 

conviction. 

Affirmed.

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