Title: Fullwood v. Commonwealth
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 091015
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: February 25, 2010

Present:  Keenan, Koontz, Kinser, Lemons, Goodwyn, and Millette, 
JJ., and Carrico, S.J. 
 
RONNIE EUGENE FULLWOOD 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 091015 
SENIOR JUSTICE HARRY L. CARRICO 
 
 
 
February 25, 2010 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
This appeal involves the application of Code § 18.2-255.2, 
which is entitled “Prohibiting the sale or manufacture of drugs 
on or near certain properties.”  On June 12, 2006, a grand jury 
in the Circuit Court for the City of Newport News indicted the 
defendant, Ronnie Eugene Fullwood, on one count of possessing 
marijuana and one count of possessing cocaine with intent to 
distribute within 1,000 feet of a school while upon public 
property or property open to public use in violation of Code 
§ 18.2-255.2. 
 
At the outset of a bench trial in the circuit court, 
Fullwood moved to dismiss one of the charges against him on the 
ground that possession of more than one substance with intent to 
distribute within 1,000 feet of a school constituted only one 
offense because the possession was based upon a single incident 
or transaction.  The circuit court denied the motion.  The court 
denied similar motions made at the conclusion of the 
Commonwealth’s evidence and at the conclusion of all the 
evidence, the latter motion adding an argument that both charges 
should be dismissed because the possession did not occur on 
property open to public use.  
 
At Fullwood’s sentencing, he again moved the dismissal of 
one of the charges on the ground that the possession of two 
substances at the same time constituted only one offense.  The 
circuit court denied the motion and sentenced Fullwood to 
incarceration with the Virginia Department of Corrections for 
five years on his marijuana conviction, all suspended, and for 
five years on his cocaine conviction, with four years suspended.  
Both suspensions were conditioned upon Fullwood’s good behavior 
for fifteen years and his supervision on probation for one year 
from the date of his release from custody.∗ 
 
In a published opinion, the Court of Appeals of Virginia 
affirmed the judgment of the circuit court.  Fullwood v. 
Commonwealth, 54 Va. App. 153, 676 S.E.2d 348 (2009).  We 
awarded Fullwood this appeal. 
Code § l8.2-255.2 provides in pertinent part as follows: 
 
 
A. It shall be unlawful for any person to 
manufacture, sell or distribute or possess with intent 
to sell, give or distribute any controlled substance, 
imitation controlled substance or marijuana while: 
 
 
(i) upon the property, including buildings and 
grounds, of any public or private elementary, 
secondary, or post secondary school, or any public 
                     
 
∗ Fullwood was also convicted of two other drug charges plus 
a charge of possessing a firearm while simultaneously possessing 
controlled substances.  However, these charges are not involved 
in this appeal. 
 
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or private two-year or four-year institution of 
higher education, or any clearly marked licensed 
child day center as defined in § 63.2-100; 
 
 
(ii) upon public property or any property open 
to public use within 1,000 feet of the property 
described in clause (i); 
 
. . . . 
 
 
B. Violation of this section shall constitute a 
separate and distinct felony.  Any person violating 
the provisions of this section shall, upon conviction, 
be imprisoned for a term of not less than one year nor 
more than five years and fined not more than $100,000.  
A second or subsequent conviction hereunder for an 
offense involving a controlled substance classified in 
Schedule I, II, or III of the Drug Control Act 
(§ 54.1-3400 et seq.) or more than one-half ounce of 
marijuana shall be punished by a mandatory minimum 
term of imprisonment of one year to be served 
consecutively with any other sentence. 
 
BACKGROUND 
 
 
On the early afternoon of January 20, 2006, Officers Ara M. 
Hahn and J. S. Turlington of the City of Newport News Police 
Department conducted surveillance at the Newsome Park apartment 
complex located on a dead-end street in the city.  Off of the 
end of that street is a cul-de-sac and off of the cul-de-sac is 
a parking lot serving the complex that is less than six hundred 
feet from the Newsome Park Elementary School. 
 
The apartment complex is located on private property posted 
with “No Trespassing” signs.  There was also a letter on file 
with the Police Department authorizing the police to enforce the 
“No Trespassing” prohibition. 
 
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The police suspected that an “open-air drug market” was 
being operated on the parking lot; they had made “a lot [of 
arrests] dealing with narcotics” and had seized “various amounts 
of mostly marijuana.”  Officers Hahn and Turlington positioned 
themselves in a vacant apartment overlooking the parking lot.  
Using binoculars, Officer Hahn saw Fullwood pull into the 
parking lot and park his car near a dumpster.  He alighted from 
the car and remained in the area talking to “people out there 
loitering around.” 
 
About 3:30 p.m., a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot 
and stopped twenty to thirty yards away from Fullwood’s car.  
The driver of the pickup “never got out.”  Within a twenty-
second span, Fullwood approached the driver’s window of the 
pickup, had a brief conversation with the driver, and “appeared 
to get . . . money, currency” from him.  Fullwood then walked to 
his car, opened the trunk, and got “a small item” out of a 
backpack.  Fullwood walked back to the pickup, where the driver 
put out his hand, palm up, into which Fullwood “appeared to drop 
something.”  Fullwood walked away and entered one of the 
apartments, where he stayed for “a couple minutes.”  The driver 
of the pickup exited the parking lot. 
 
Officer Hahn radioed “surrounding units that were acting as 
take-down units” and gave them a description of the pickup truck 
and described what he had observed.  J.V. Polak, a sergeant of 
 
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the Police Department, observed the pickup on a nearby street, 
conducted a traffic stop, and gave the driver Miranda warnings.  
Sergeant Polak recovered “[a] clear plastic bag containing 
suspected marijuana” from the driver. 
 
Officer Hahn later observed another suspected sale when a 
vehicle pulled into the parking lot and a passenger wearing a 
“Georgetown Hoyas jacket” got out and engaged Fullwood in a 
brief conversation.  The two then went to the trunk of 
Fullwood’s vehicle where Fullwood retrieved a “plastic bag that 
looked like it had an off-white substance inside of it.”  
Fullwood “received money” and “did the exchange with the 
gentleman in the Hoyas jacket,” who got into his car and drove 
away.  He was not arrested because Officer Hahn did not have an 
officer “to take down that suspected buyer.” 
 
About 5:43 p.m., Sergeant Polak arrived at the parking lot 
and observed Fullwood walking around.  Polak approached 
Fullwood, placed him under arrest, and told him that there would 
be a search of his car.  Fullwood told Sergeant Polak that 
“there was a gun in the trunk,” and when Sergeant Polak said he 
“believed there was marijuana in the trunk,” Fullwood said 
“there was about two ounces in the trunk.” 
 
The trunk was opened and on the top of the spare tire 
Sergeant Polak recovered “a Ruger P95DC semiautomatic handgun 
with a magazine containing 15 rounds of live ammunition.”  Polak 
 
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also found in the backpack a clear plastic bag that contained 
forty-seven individually wrapped chunks of cocaine, two small 
pieces of individually wrapped cocaine, another clear plastic 
bag with a large chunk of crack cocaine, and two clear plastic 
bags with forty individually wrapped bags of marijuana inside.  
In addition, Sergeant Polak recovered from Fullwood’s pants 
pockets three pieces of crack cocaine along with $203.00 in cash 
and a cellular phone. 
THE ISSUES 
 
Fullwood does not dispute that he possessed both cocaine 
and marijuana within one thousand feet of a school or that he 
intended to distribute both drugs.  He does dispute that he 
possessed the drugs while on public property or property open to 
public use.  On its part, the Commonwealth does not contend that 
the parking lot where the drugs were possessed is public 
property.  Therefore, only the “property open to public use” 
portion of Code § 18.2-255.2 is pertinent to our review. 
 
Fullwood also disputes that the circuit court could  
convict him of possessing both cocaine and marijuana without 
violating his guarantee against double jeopardy.  Thus two 
questions are presented, (1) whether Fullwood was upon property 
open to public use while he possessed the drugs, and (2) whether 
his convictions for possessing both cocaine and marijuana with 
 
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intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school violated the 
constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. 
 
Noting that Code § 18.2-255.2 is a penal statute, Fullwood 
relies on our decisions which have held that such laws “must be 
strictly construed against the state and limited in application 
to cases falling clearly within the language of the statute.”  
Turner v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 456, 459, 309 S.E.2d 337, 338 
(1983); Hughes v. Commonwealth, 33 Va. App. 405, 408, 533 S.E.2d 
649, 650 (2000).  We have made it clear that it is a fundamental 
rule of statutory construction that penal statutes are to be 
strictly construed against the Commonwealth and in favor of a 
citizen’s liberty.  Harward v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 363, 365, 
330 S.E.2d 89, 92 (1985).  Such statutes may not be extended by 
implication; they must be applied to cases clearly described by 
the language used and the accused is entitled to the benefit of 
any reasonable doubt about the construction of a penal statute.  
Martin v. Commonwealth, 224 Va. 298, 300-01, 295 S.E.2d 890, 892 
(1982).  None of these statements of basic principles, however, 
warrants the conclusion Fullwood asks us to draw in the 
circumstances of these offenses. 
 
With respect to the issue whether the parking lot was 
property open to public use, Fullwood argues that the circuit 
court construed Code § 18.2-255.2 expansively to cover a case 
not clearly described by the language used.  He says that 
 
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because the Newsome Park apartment complex was posted with “No 
Trespassing” signs, backed up by the letter on file in the 
Police Department, the parking lot where he possessed the drugs 
was private and not open to public use. 
 
We disagree with Fullwood.  The circuit court made a 
factual finding that the parking lot was property open to public 
use, and the record supports that finding.  Fullwood does not 
challenge Officer Hahn’s characterization of the parking lot as 
an “open-air drug market” where the police made “a lot [of 
arrests] dealing with narcotics,” proving that “a lot” of 
members of the public used the lot.  On the day in question, 
there were “people out there loitering around” in the parking 
lot and Fullwood spent practically his whole afternoon there, 
meanwhile serving two drug purchasers who arrived on the scene.  
The fact that they knew where to go to secure drugs would 
indicate they had been there before, and from the quantity of 
drugs Sergeant Polak recovered from the trunk of Fullwood’s car, 
it is obvious Fullwood anticipated the arrival of other 
potential purchasers of his wares before the day ended.  Thus, 
it is clear on the record before us that the parking lot was 
“readily accessible” to members of the public who were not 
residents of the complex or whose presence was not authorized, 
including Fullwood.  People v. Jiminez, 39 Cal. Rptr.2d 12, 13-
15 (Cal. Ct. App. 1995); see Smith v. Commonwealth, 26 Va. App. 
 
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620, 626, 496 S.E.2d 117, 120 (1998) (holding that the area 
outside a convenience store was “property open to public use” 
because “[there was] no indication in the record that [the area] 
was blocked, closed, or in any way inaccessible to the public” 
and that “the participants to the drug transaction . . . had 
full access to the property on several occasions.”) 
 
The fact that people might have been using the lot for 
illegal purposes does not affect the question whether it was 
“property open to public use.”  Code § 18.2-255.2(A)(ii) is 
unambiguous in its meaning; it reads “property open to public 
use,” not “property open to legal public use,” and language 
cannot be added to change its meaning.  Seguin v. Northrop 
Grumman Systems Corp., 277 Va. 244, 248, 672 S.E.2d 877, 879 
(2009). 
 
There were, of course, many people using the lot for legal 
purposes, including the tenants of the apartment complex and 
their visiting friends and relatives, service personnel, 
mailmen, deliverymen, and others.  More important, there would 
doubtless be many children, including students from the nearby 
elementary school, using the lot daily.  It was to protect 
children from the “threat of harm” posed “when drug transactions 
take place within 1,000 feet of a school” that Code § 18.2-255.2 
was enacted.  Commonwealth v. Burns, 240 Va. 171, 177, 395 
S.E.2d 456, 459 (1990). 
 
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We have not overlooked Fullwood’s fervent reliance upon the 
“No Trespassing” signs posted in the apartment complex.  He has 
repeatedly stressed the presence of the signs during his trial 
in the circuit court, in the briefs he has filed, and in oral 
argument before this Court.  But he has not once stated where in 
the apartment complex the signs were posted and, most notably, 
there is not a shred of evidence in the record even suggesting 
that a sign was posted at the parking lot.  One would expect 
that had there been a “No Trespassing” sign posted there, 
Fullwood would have favored us with an enlarged photograph.  
There being no evidence of any posted restriction on accessing 
the parking lot, much less active enforcement of such a 
prohibition, members of the public could not have reasonably 
anticipated being challenged regarding their use of the lot, and 
thus we conclude that the parking lot was “property open to 
public use” within the meaning of Code § 18.2-255.2(A)(ii).  See 
Smith, 26 Va. App. at 626, 496 S.E.2d at 120 (holding that the 
property in question was “open to public use,” in part, because 
the “participants to the drug transaction . . . had full access 
to the property . . . with no interruption from the owners of 
the establishment”); cf. United States v. Smith, 395 F.3d 516, 
520-21 (4th Cir. 2005) (holding, in a case involving whether an 
access road was a “highway” under Virginia law, that “[t]he 
presence of signs [posted along the roadway] barring public 
 
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entry establishes that the access road is not open to public 
use”); Caplan v. Bogard, 264 Va. 219, 225, 226-29, 563 S.E.2d 
719, 722, 723-24 (2002) (holding that the lack of a physical 
barrier preventing “entrance to . . . a privately maintained 
parking lot” did not alone suffice to raise a presumption that 
the route was a “highway” under Virginia law, i.e., a route 
“open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular 
travel”) (internal quotation marks omitted). 
 
This brings us to the double jeopardy issue.  Fullwood 
argues that the circuit court again violated the principles of 
statutory construction in convicting him of two violations of 
Code § 18.2-255.2 and subjecting him to the mandatory minimum 
penalty for a second offense “even though there was only a 
single occasion or transaction in which controlled substances 
were held for sale or distribution.” 
 
Fullwood contends that the General Assembly intended in 
enacting Code § 18.2-255.2 to deter “drug transactions, not the 
possession of individual drugs per se,” and if the intention of 
the legislature had been to provide for prosecution “on a per-
substance basis, it could have indicated so.”  We cannot add 
this provision to the statute, Fullwood asserts, and, without 
it, the statute permits the prosecution of only one offense, 
regardless of the number of drugs he possessed.  Hence, Fullwood 
concludes, the circuit court’s application of the statute 
 
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permits multiple punishments for the same offense in violation 
of the double jeopardy clauses of the Constitution of the United 
States and the Constitution of Virginia. 
 
Both double jeopardy clauses protect against a second 
prosecution for the same offense after acquittal.  They also 
forbid a second prosecution for the same offense after 
conviction.  And they prohibit multiple punishments for the same 
offense.  Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 165 (1977); Blythe v. 
Commonwealth, 222 Va. 722, 725, 284 S.E.2d 796, 797 (1981). 
 
Whether there has been a double jeopardy violation presents 
a question of law requiring a de novo review.  See United States 
v. Imngren, 98 F.3d 811, 813 (4th Cir. 1996).  In such a review, 
the rule is that “[w]here consecutive sentences are imposed at a 
single criminal trial, the role of the constitutional guarantee 
is limited to assuring that the court does not exceed its 
legislative authorization by imposing multiple punishments for 
the same offense.”  Brown, 432 U.S. at 165. 
 
We disagree with Fullwood’s contention that there was only 
a single transaction in which controlled substances were held 
for sale or distribution within 1,000 feet of a school and which 
would support only one conviction.  There was one transaction 
involving marijuana in Fullwood’s encounter in the parking lot 
with the driver of the pickup truck and a second transaction 
 
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involving cocaine in Fullwood’s meeting in the parking lot with 
the driver wearing a “Hoyas jacket.” 
 
Code § 18.2-255.2 clearly makes these two transactions two 
offenses and displays the legislative intent that they should be 
subject to multiple punishments.  Subsection B of the statute 
provides that “[v]iolation of this section shall constitute a 
separate and distinct felony” with punishment at a certain level 
for a first conviction but at an enhanced level for a “second or 
subsequent conviction” involving certain classified controlled 
substances or more than one-half ounce of marijuana.  To hold 
that Fullwood’s two transactions constituted only one offense 
would amount to writing out of the statute the language 
concerning a “second or subsequent conviction,” and we are not 
inclined to do that. 
CONCLUSION 
 
We hold that the circuit court did not err in finding that 
the violations in question occurred on “property open to public 
use” under Code § 18.2-255.2(A)(ii) and that the court did not 
exceed its legislative authorization in sentencing Fullwood to 
multiple punishments.  Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment 
of the Court of Appeals. 
Affirmed. 
 
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