COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Benton, Elder and Haley Argued at Salem, Virginia

BEVERLY LAM MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY v. Record No. 3236-03-3 JUDGE LARRY G. ELDER MARCH 29, 2005 COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COUR T OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY John J. McGrath, Jr., Judge James N. Dickson, III, for appellant. Josephine F. Whalen, Assistant A ttorney General (Jerry W. Kilgore, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Beverly Lam (appellant) appeals from his benc h trial conviction for driving after having been declared a habitual offender. On appeal, he contends the evidence was insufficient to prove he drove the vehicle at issue. We hold the evid ence was sufficient, and we affirm the challenged conviction. When considering the sufficiency of the evid ence on appeal in a criminal case, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, granti ng to it all reasonable inferences fairly deducible ther efrom. Higginbotham v. Commonwealth , 216 Va. 349, 352, 218 S.E.2d 534, 537 (1975). Circumstantia l evidence is sufficient to support a conviction provided the evidence as a whole, viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, excludes all reasonable hypotheses of innocence flowi ng from it. Coleman v. Commonwealth , 226 Va. 31, 53, 307 S.E.2d 864, 876 (1983).

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opin ion is not designated for publication.- 2 - In its role of judging witness credibility, the fact finder is entitled to disbelieve the self-serving testimony of the accused, in whole or in part, and to conclude that the accused is lying to conceal his guilt . Speight v. Commonwealth , 4 Va. App. 83, 88, 354 S.E.2d 95, 98 (1987) (en banc). However, a trial court’s conc lusion that the accused has lied is not substantive evidence of guilt and is insufficient, standing alone, to support a conviction. Tarpley v. Commonwealth , 261 Va. 251, 256-57, 542 S.E.2d 761, 764 (2001) ( noting fact that accused lied provided basis for rejection of accused’s testimony but was not substantive evidence of guilt). Rather, it is merely “a circumstance, similar to fl ight from a crime scene, that a fact-finder may properly consider as evidence of gu ilty knowledge.” Covil v. Commonwealth , 268 Va. 692, 696, 604 S.E.2d 79, 82 (2004) (finding evidence suffi cient to support larceny conviction based on presumption of guilty knowledge flowing from defendant’s possession of recently stolen goods in light of trial court’s rejection of defendant’s innocent explanation for that possession). Here, appellant’s testimony that he was not driving the car, wh ich the trial court rejected as false, was insufficient, standing al one, to prove the converse--that he was , in fact, driving the car at the time of the accident. Neverthele ss, the remaining evidence, both direct and circumstantial, was sufficient to support the necessary finding that he drove the car on the evening in question. When appellant testified at trial, he admitted being in the car that evening but claimed he was merely a passenger. He averred that Jud ith Hammer, the woman with whom he had lived for two years, was driving. Hammer gave similar testimony. Both also tes tified that the vehicle sustained damage on the passenger’s side. Finall y, appellant claimed that both he and Hammer correctly described the damage to the car as being on the passenger’s side when State Trooper Q.M. Garber interviewed them immediately following the accident.- 3 - Trooper Garber’s testimony rega rding the contemporaneous in terviews was at odds with appellant’s. Garber testified that when he at tempted to question Hammer, the vehicle’s owner, on March 3, 2003, immediately after the accident, appellant “intervened numerous times” and Trooper Garber had to “advise[] [a ppellant] to sit quietly.” Garb er testified that Hammer then gave an unequivocal but wholly inaccurate descri ption of the accident and the damage sustained by the vehicle. Garber testified Hammer related that “a deer jumped out and struck the driver door” (emphasis added) and insisted all damage to the car was on the driver’s side. The physical evidence, however, indicated the car sustained da mage only on the passenger’s side and that it did so when the car “veered off the road sligh tly” and “struck . . . two trees [on] the passenger side front.” Trooper Garber testif ied that when he interviewed appe llant, appellant, in contrast to Hammer, was “very knowledgeable of what t ook place” during the accident and was “able to describe consistently the damage to the vehicle. ” Appellant also admitted to Trooper Garber that the gun in the backseat “was my gun on that ni ght,” and Trooper Garber found the ammunition for the gun primarily in the driver ’s side floorboard of the car. Thus, the evidence supported a finding that appellant attempted unsuccessfully to interrupt Hammer as she erroneously, but with gr eat certainty, described the accident to Trooper Garber. Appellant, unlike Hammer, was able to gi ve an accurate description of the damage to the vehicle in the interview immediately followi ng the accident. When appellant was unable to correct Hammer’s version by interru pting the interview, he lied at trial by claiming Hammer had accurately described to Trooper Garber both the accide nt and damage to the vehicle. Finally, the bulk of the ammunition for the gun appellant adm itted was “[his] on that night” was located on the driver’s side floorboard. Th e only hypothesis flowing from this evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to appellant, is that appellant wa s alone in the vehicle at the time of the accident and, thus, was the individual driving.- 4 - For these reasons, we hold th e evidence was sufficient to support appellan t’s conviction for driving after having been declared a habitual offender, and we affirm. Affirmed.