COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Chief Judge Moon, Judges Willis and Elder 

Argued at Richmond, Virginia 

SHERMAN JONES 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 2896-96-2 JUDGE JERE M. H. WILLIS, JR. 

 NOVEMBER 4, 1997 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

 FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF PETERSBURG 

James F. D'Alton, Jr., Judge 

 Joseph A. Sadighian, Assistant Public 

Defender (Office of the Public Defender, on 

brief), for appellant. 

 H. Elizabeth Shaffer, Assistant Attorney 

General (Richard Cullen, Attorney General; 

Margaret Ann B. Walker, Assistant Attorney 

General, on brief), for appellee. 

 On appeal from his conviction for petit larceny, in 

violation of Code § 18.2-103, Sherman Jones contends that the 

evidence was insufficient. We disagree and affirm the judgment 

of the trial court. 

 At approximately 3:00 a.m., on November 8, 1995, Melody 

Ferris, a 7-Eleven Store employee, saw William Wilson steal four 

packs of cigarettes and leave the premises. She called the 

police. Jones and a man named Diggs had entered the store 

together a few minutes after Wilson. 

 Ferris noticed Diggs near the area containing luncheon meat 

and fresh sandwiches. She observed Jones in the back of the 

 

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

designated for publication. 
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store near the canned goods section, handling containers of Spam 

and sardines. When Jones noticed Ferris watching him, he turned 

his back toward her but continued "picking up stuff, putting it 

down, picking it up, putting it down." Jones walked to the 

medicine section where he repeatedly handled packets of BC Powder 

and Tylenol. Cigars were displayed adjacent to the medicine 

section. While Ferris was calling the police, she saw Wilson 

reenter the store. The three men then departed together without 

purchasing anything. 

 Shortly after receiving a police dispatch concerning the 

theft at the 7-Eleven, Sergeant Canady located the three men 

walking away from the store, about a block away. Following a 

consensual pat-down of Wilson, Sergeant Canady confiscated the 

stolen cigarettes and arrested him. Sergeant Canady testified 

that "[b]oth Mr. Jones and Mr. Diggs were carrying items which 

would be purchased or could be purchased from the 7-Eleven." He 

said that Jones was carrying a grocery bag and eating a sandwich 

that had a plastic wrapper. Shortly thereafter, Officer Helms 

arrived on the scene. He saw a bag on the ground next to Jones. 

 Officer Nicholson patted Jones down. He testified that he felt 

a sandwich in one of Jones' pockets and that Jones was smoking a 

cigar. 

 Upon returning to the 7-Eleven with Wilson, Sergeant Canady 

interviewed Ferris about the items being carried by Jones and 

Diggs. After he learned that neither Jones nor Diggs had 
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purchased anything, the police officers located and arrested 

them. Officer Nicholson recovered two packs of cigars from 

Jones. Neither man presented a purchase receipt. 

 By examining the 7-Eleven identification number on the 

recovered items, Ferris verified that all of the items came from 

her store, but acknowledged that she could not say with "one 

hundred percent certainty" that the cigars were stolen. Ferris 

viewed a videotape recorded by the store's surveillance camera 

and testified that the three men had not been in the store 

earlier that day or night. 

 The confiscated goods, which encompassed the items recovered 

from a grocery bag, included two cans of Spam, one can of 

sardines, approximately thirty packets of BC Powder, four packs 

of cigarettes, and two packs of cigars. Also seized from the 

three men were plastic wrappers from refrigerated sandwiches and 

a bottle of wine. 

 Jones contends that the evidence is insufficient to sustain 

his conviction. He argues that the Commonwealth failed to 

disprove two reasonable hypotheses of innocence: (1) the cigars 

recovered from his person were not stolen; and (2) the grocery 

bag that he was seen holding was not the same grocery bag from 

which the recovered items came. 

 On appeal, we review the evidence in the 

light most favorable to the Commonwealth, 

granting to it all reasonable inferences 

fairly deducible therefrom. The judgment of 

a trial court sitting without a jury is 

entitled to the same weight as a jury verdict 

and will not be set aside unless it appears 
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from the evidence that the judgment is 

plainly wrong or without evidence to support 

it. 

Martin v. Commonwealth, 4 Va. App. 438, 443, 358 S.E.2d 415, 418 

(1987). When the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged on 

appeal, "it is our duty to look to that evidence which tends to 

support the verdict and to permit the verdict to stand unless 

plainly wrong." Snyder v. Commonwealth, 202 Va. 1009, 1016, 121 

S.E.2d 452, 457 (1961). See Johnson v. Commonwealth, 2 Va. App. 

598, 604-05, 347 S.E.2d 163, 167 (1986) ("Circumstantial evidence 

alone is sufficient to sustain a conviction."). 

 Ferris observed Jones acting in a suspicious manner in the 

store, handling cans of sardines, Spam, as well as BC Powder. 

The medicine was adjacent to an area containing cigars. Jones 

left the store with two other individuals, one of whom had been 

seen stealing cigarettes, and the other having been seen in the 

sandwich section. No purchase was made. A short time later, 

Jones was seen in the vicinity of the store in possession of a 

plastic-wrapped sandwich, cigars, and a grocery bag. A store 

clerk confirmed that the cigars and the goods in the grocery bag 

brought to the store by the police came from that specific 

7-Eleven. None of the three men had been in the store previously 

that day, and no receipt for purchase was presented. 

 "Whether the Commonwealth relies upon either direct or 

circumstantial evidence, it is not required to disprove every 

remote possibility of innocence, but is, instead, required only 
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to establish guilt of the accused to the exclusion of a 

reasonable doubt." Bridgeman v. Commonwealth, 3 Va. App. 523, 

526-27, 351 S.E.2d 598, 600 (1986) (citation omitted). See Smith 

v. Commonwealth, 185 Va. 800, 820, 40 S.E.2d 273, 282 (1946). 

Indeed, "'[t]he hypotheses which the Commonwealth must reasonably 

exclude are those "which flow from the evidence itself, and not 

from the imagination of defendant's counsel."'" Cantrell v. 

Commonwealth, 7 Va. App. 269, 289-90, 373 S.E.2d 328, 338 (1988) 

(citations omitted). 

 A theory of innocence based upon speculation that an 

unidentified third party may have given Jones the cigars, that 

Jones may have purchased the goods on a previous day or that a 

mix-up may have occurred between his bag and the bag containing 

the stolen goods does not flow from the evidence. The 

credibility of the witnesses, the weight accorded the testimony 

and the inferences to be drawn from proven facts are solely 

within the province of the trier of fact, provided such 

inferences are justified and reasonable. See Long v. 

Commonwealth, 8 Va. App. 194, 199, 379 S.E.2d 473, 476 (1989); 

Webb v. Commonwealth, 204 Va. 24, 34, 129 S.E.2d 22, 29-30 

(1963). We find that it was not error for the trial court, 

having heard all the evidence, to infer that the grocery bag 

possessed by Jones was the grocery bag containing stolen items 

and that Jones participated in the theft of the items from the 

7-Eleven. 
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 The judgment of the trial court is affirmed. 

 Affirmed.