COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Elder, Bumgardner and Kelsey 

Argued at Alexandria, Virginia 

TROY JACOBS 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 0874-02-4 JUDGE RUDOLPH BUMGARDNER, III 

 JULY 8, 2003 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ARLINGTON COUNTY 

Paul F. Sheridan, Judge 

 Mark S. Thrash for appellant. 

 H. Elizabeth Shaffer, Assistant Attorney 

General (Jerry W. Kilgore, Attorney General, 

on brief), for appellee. 

 A jury convicted Troy Jacobs of three counts of 

embezzlement. He maintains a properly authenticated record of 

the Department of Motor Vehicles was inadmissible hearsay. 

Concluding the trial court properly admitted the record, we 

affirm the convictions. 

 The defendant was a restaurant manager with the 

responsibility of making bank deposits. The embezzlement 

charges arose from his failure to make three deposits though he 

made entries to company records that indicated he had personally 

made the deposits. He recorded that he had made a deposit on 

 

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

designated for publication.
May 13, 2000, but the bank record did not reflect a deposit that 

day. 

 The bank teller, who knew the defendant, testified that he 

had not made any deposit on May 13, 2000. The defendant 

cross-examined her using a photograph taken by the bank's 

surveillance camera. It showed a man transacting business at 

the teller's window that morning. At the preliminary hearing, 

the teller had identified the exhibit as a photograph of the 

defendant. She conceded her previous statement but recanted 

that testimony. The teller explained her reasons for concluding 

she had been wrong and for testifying at trial that the man in 

the photograph was not the defendant. 

A bank investigator retrieved the photograph from the 

surveillance tapes covering the period when the defendant 

claimed to have made the deposit. The investigator matched the 

surveillance photograph to the bank's electronic record of a 

transaction made by Michael Patrick Walsh. The photograph 

reflected a check cashing transaction. The investigator 

presented the bank imaging record of a check cashed by Walsh at 

9:56:05 a.m., May 13, 2000. The image of the check showed the 

check number, and the date and time of the transaction and its 

validation, all of which corresponded with the bank's electronic 

journal. 

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The Commonwealth offered a record from the Department of 

Motor Vehicles. It consisted of a photograph of a man; the 

name, "Walsh, Michael, Patrick"; a signature, "M. Walsh"; a 

customer number, "T69613398"; and a date of issuance. The 

Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles certified that 

the single page facsimile transmission was an accurate depiction 

of the digital image for the "customer" with that number as 

maintained by the department. 

The defendant conceded the DMV record was properly 

authenticated under Code § 46.2-215, but maintained it was 

inadmissible hearsay. Assuming the record constituted hearsay 

in this case, it was properly admissible under the public 

records exception to the hearsay rule. Ingram v. Commonwealth, 

1 Va. App. 335, 338, 338 S.E.2d 657, 658 (1986). See A Guide to 

Evidence in Virginia Rule 803 (8), 93, 100 (2003). 

 In Smoot v. Commonwealth, 18 Va. App. 562, 445 S.E.2d 688 

(1994), the defendant argued that a DMV record showing his 

habitual offender adjudication was inadmissible because the 

Commissioner did not have personal knowledge of his prior 

adjudication.1 This Court rejected that argument. Where the 

 1

 "In today's complex world, most governmental officials do 

not literally have personal knowledge of the facts being 

recorded. If literally applied, this rule would make almost all 

public records inadmissible." Charles E. Friend, The Law of 

Evidence in Virginia § 18-29, at 721 (5th ed. 1999). 

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Commissioner, who is responsible for maintaining the records, 

receives data entered by another official, whose duty to record 

is imposed by law, the "personal knowledge" requirement is 

satisfied, and the record is admissible. Id. at 565, 338 S.E.2d 

at 690. The entries made by public officials are admissible 

under the official records exception without the testimony of 

the recorder. Hall v. Commonwealth, 15 Va. App. 170, 175, 421 

S.E.2d 887, 891 (1992). The official, who issued the license 

and entered the data into the department's records, required 

personal knowledge of the facts; the Commissioner did not. 

 In this case, the public record contained a picture, a 

signature, and the number assigned by the Department of Motor 

Vehicles to that picture and signature. The recorded image 

resembled that in the surveillance photograph. The number and 

signature matched the driver's license number and the 

endorsement on the back of the check processed by the bank on 

May 13, 2000. The record was admissible as an exception to the 

hearsay rule, and the trial court properly admitted it. 

Accordingly, we affirm the defendant's convictions. 

 Affirmed.

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