COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Benton, Agee and Senior Judge Hodges 

Argued at Chesapeake, Virginia 

EDGAR ROLAND BARFIELD 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1050-00-1 JUDGE JAMES W. BENTON, JR. 

 FEBRUARY 20, 2001 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

 FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH 

A. Bonwill Shockley, Judge 

 Shawn R. Salyer (Louis W. Kershner & 

Associates, P.C., on brief), for appellant. 

 Leah A. Darron, 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.

 The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether the 

evidence was sufficient for the trial judge to convict Edgar 

Barfield of abduction in violation of Code § 18.2-47. We affirm 

the conviction. 

I. 

 "Where the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged after 

conviction, it is our duty to consider it in the light most 

favorable to the Commonwealth and give it all reasonable 

inferences fairly deducible therefrom." Higginbotham v. 

Commonwealth, 216 Va. 349, 352, 218 S.E.2d 534, 537 (1975). So 
viewed the Commonwealth's evidence proved that a boy, who was 

eight years old, was fighting Barfield's son, who was six years 

old, when Barfield arrived. After Barfield got out of his car to 

make an inquiry, the boy ran. Barfield chased and caught the boy 

and loudly asked why he had taken Barfield's son's knives. When 

the boy denied taking the knives, Barfield said he intended to 

take the boy home to his parents. The boy said "No" and held onto 

a fence to resist being taken. Barfield then grabbed the boy by 

the waist and forcefully pulled him from the fence. He then 

carried the boy to his car. 

 At the car, the boy freed himself and moved to the middle of 

the street. Barfield again grabbed the boy and held him to the 

ground. One witness testified that Barfield "held [the boy] on 

the ground" such that the boy "was on his belly, and . . . 

Barfield took both of his hands and set them on the [boy's] back 

and just held them there." Barfield held the boy in this manner 

"for about a minute." Another witness "saw a child being hurt and 

being held down by an adult." She testified that Barfield was 

holding the boy who had moved into a fetal position. A witness 

testified that Barfield told his son to kick the boy's head and 

held the boy while his son kicked him. Barfield then released the 

boy, ran to his vehicle, and drove away. 

 Barfield later told the police that when he arrived from 

work, his son was crying and complaining that the boy, who was the 

son's friend, had stolen knives from their house. Barfield said 

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he tried to take the boy home to his parents but the boy refused 

to go. Barfield then related the following events: 

I had him by one arm; and I said [to my 

son], slap him. He was getting on a 

bicycle, and [my son] pushed him off. I 

said, If you were my boy, I would whip your 

ass. [My son] might have kicked him. I 

continued to talk to him for a little bit, 

and then . . . [my son] may have slapped 

him, and he fell to the ground, and he may 

have kicked him. I never held him down. I 

just had him by one arm and that was just to 

keep him from kicking and stabbing me with a 

fork. . . . There was a thirteen-year-old 

boy. He may have kicked him upside down and 

shook him. 

 At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial judge 

convicted Barfield of abduction. This appeal followed. 

II. 

 In pertinent part, Code § 18.2-47 provides as follows: 

Any person, who, by force, intimidation or 

deception, and without legal justification 

or excuse, seizes, takes, transports, 

detains or secretes the person of another, 

with the intent to deprive such other person 

of his personal liberty . . . shall be 

deemed guilty of "abduction" . . . . 

 Citing Brown v. Commonwealth, 230 Va. 310, 337 S.E.2d 711 

(1985), Barfield contends that the evidence was insufficient to 

convict him of abduction because the amount of force he used was 

incidental to an assault. The holding in Brown is not germane 

to the resolution of this appeal. The issue in Brown concerned 

whether the conviction for abduction constituted double jeopardy 

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where the accused was convicted of both abduction and rape. See

id. at 312-13, 337 S.E.2d at 713. The Court held as follows: 

[O]ne accused of abduction by detention and 

another crime involving restraint of the 

victim, both growing out of a continuing 

course of conduct, is subject upon 

conviction to separate penalties for 

separate offenses only when the detention 

committed in the act of abduction is 

separate and apart from, and not merely 

incidental to, the restraint employed in the 

commission of the other crime. 

Id. at 314, 337 S.E.2d at 714. Here, however, Barfield was 

charged with and convicted of only the offense of abduction. We 

only need to determine whether the evidence was sufficient to 

prove abduction as defined in Code § 18.2-47. 

 Construing Code § 18.2-47, the Supreme Court held as 

follows: 

Code § 18.2-47 supersedes the common law. 

We shall construe it according to its plain 

meaning and evident intent. Because it 

casts its several prohibited acts in the 

disjunctive, each is independently 

sufficient to support a conviction. 

Accordingly, the physical detention of a 

person, with the intent to deprive him of 

his personal liberty, by force, 

intimidation, or deception, without any 

asportation of the victim from one place to 

another, is sufficient. . . . 

 We recognize . . . that in rape, robbery, 

and assault cases there is usually some 

detention, and often a seizure, of the 

victim. The constitutional problems which 

may be created by such an overlapping of 

crimes are, however, not before us for 

decision in this case. 

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Scott v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 519, 526, 323 S.E.2d 572, 576 

(1984). 

 Several witnesses testified that Barfield restrained the 

boy on the ground while his son kicked the boy. One of the 

witnesses heard Barfield tell his son to kick the boy and 

testified that Barfield's son kicked the boy's head for 

approximately a minute while Barfield held the boy. Barfield's 

own statement to the police, while denying that he restrained 

the boy on the ground, relates that Barfield held the boy and 

told his son to slap him. This evidence was sufficient for the 

trial judge to find beyond a reasonable doubt both that Barfield 

detained the boy and that he did so with the intent to deprive 

the boy of his personal liberty while his son, at Barfield's 

direction, assaulted the boy. 

 Barfield argues that Johnson v. Commonwealth, 221 Va. 872, 

275 S.E.2d 592 (1981), requires that we reverse his conviction. 

In that case, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction for 

abduction because an intruder held a woman "in furtherance of 

his sexual advances and not with the intent to deprive her of 

her personal liberty, although such a deprivation did occur 

momentarily." Id. at 879, 275 S.E.2d at 597. The intruder, as 

shown by his actions, had no intention of detaining because he 

released her when she resisted. In this case, Barfield not only 

detained the boy, but he had the requisite intent to make that 

detention a crime. He held the boy on the ground while ordering 

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his son to kick him. This action satisfies the requirements of 

Code § 18.2-47. 

 Accordingly, we affirm the conviction. 

 Affirmed. 

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