Title: Commonwealth v. Southerly
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 002866
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: September 14, 2001

Present:  All the Justices 
 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 002866 
CHIEF JUSTICE HARRY L. CARRICO
 
 
 
September 14, 2001 
NATHAN TODD SOUTHERLY 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
This appeal presents a claim stemming from Baker v. 
Commonwealth, 28 Va. App. 306, 504 S.E.2d 394 (1998), aff’d 
per curiam, 258 Va. 1, 516 S.E.2d 219 (1999) (failure to 
give both parents notice of juvenile proceedings renders 
void juvenile’s subsequent criminal conviction on transfer 
to circuit court).  In this case, the record shows that 
Nathan Todd Southerly was born June 29, 1973.  During the 
weeks leading up to his eighteenth birthday, he committed 
multiple criminal offenses in the City of Harrisonburg. 
 
After Southerly reached the age of eighteen, 
Harrisonburg police filed a total of twenty-two petitions 
against him in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District 
Court of Rockingham County, alleging seven counts of grand 
larceny, fourteen counts of forging and uttering, and one 
count of breaking and entering.  The petitions named Linda 
Riggleman as Southerly’s mother.1  However, spaces in the 
                     
1 Southerly makes no claim on appeal concerning the 
adequacy of notice to his mother. 
petition forms for the name of Southerly’s father were left 
blank. 
 
On January 7, 1992, the juvenile court certified the 
cases to the Circuit Court of Rockingham County.  On 
January 21, 1992, a grand jury indicted Southerly for the 
offenses that had been transferred and for other offenses 
he committed after turning eighteen.  He plead guilty or 
not innocent to the indictments, and in a final order 
entered August 14, 1992, the circuit court found him guilty   
and sentenced him to serve sixty-two years in the 
penitentiary, with thirty-one years suspended.  No question 
was raised in any of the proceedings in juvenile or circuit 
court concerning the lack of notice to Southerly's father. 
 
On July 9, 1999, Southerly filed a motion in the 
circuit court alleging that the court “lacked jurisdiction 
to try him as an adult because the Juvenile and Domestic 
Relations District Court did not comply with the mandatory 
notice requirements of Virginia Code §§ 16.1-263 and 16.1-
264” in that the juvenile court “failed to provide service 
of process upon [Southerly’s] biological father.”2  The 
                     
2 At the time of the juvenile proceedings in the 
present case, Code § 16.1-263(A) provided that “[a]fter a 
petition has been filed, the court shall direct the 
issuance of summonses, one directed to the child . . . and 
another to the parents . . . .”  At its 1999 session, the 
General Assembly substituted “at least one parent” for “the 
 
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motion requested the circuit court to “enter an order 
vacating the judgment order in these matters and remanding 
the matters to the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District 
Court to take further action if the Commonwealth be so 
advised.”3
 
In a hearing on the motion, it was stipulated that 
Charles E. Cubbage, Sr., is Southerly’s biological father, 
that the father was not notified of the petitions against 
his son, that, at all relevant times, the father was alive 
and residing in West Virginia, and that his address was 
known or reasonably discoverable.  It was also stipulated 
that the juvenile court did not certify on the record that 
the father’s identity was not reasonably ascertainable.  
See Code § 16.1-263(E) (no summons or notification required 
if judge certifies on record that identity of parent not 
reasonably ascertainable). 
                                                             
parents” in § 16.1-263(A).  1999 Va. Acts ch. 952.  Code 
§ 16.1-264(A) provided at the time of the juvenile 
proceedings in this case that if a party other than the 
person who is the subject of the petition cannot be found 
or his post-office address cannot be ascertained, the court 
may order service of the summons by publication.  The 
language of § 16.1-264(A) is unchanged. 
 
3 A motion to vacate was employed in Matthews v. 
Commonwealth, 216 Va. 358, 218 S.E.2d 538 (1975), to attack 
the jurisdiction of a circuit court to try a defendant as 
an adult upon transfer from a juvenile court without 
compliance with the applicable provisions of the transfer 
statute. 
 
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The circuit court denied Southerly’s motion to vacate.  
Southerly appealed the denial to the Court of Appeals.  In 
a published opinion, the Court of Appeals rejected the 
Commonwealth’s argument that because "Southerly was 
eighteen years old and an adult when the charges against 
him were initiated, . . . [he] stood sui juris before the 
court and neither needed nor was entitled to the special 
protection afforded juveniles."  Southerly v. Commonwealth, 
33 Va. App. 650, 654-55, 536 S.E.2d 452, 454 (2000).  Then, 
applying Baker, the court held that Southerly's convictions 
were void.  Southerly, 33 Va. App. at 655, 536 S.E.2d at 
454.  We awarded the Commonwealth this appeal. 
 
On appeal, the Commonwealth repeats its argument that 
notice to Southerly’s father was unnecessary.  However, the 
Commonwealth also raises a threshold question, viz., 
whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to entertain 
Southerly’s appeal from the trial court’s denial of his 
motion to vacate.  The Commonwealth argues that the Court 
of Appeals lacked jurisdiction because the proceedings 
conducted incident to Southerly's motion to vacate were 
civil in nature and, hence, the denial of the motion was 
appealable only to this Court. 
 
The Commonwealth cites Virginia Dept. of Corr. v. 
Crowley, 227 Va. 254, 316 S.E.2d 439 (1984).  There, we 
 
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held that motions to vacate orders releasing convicted 
felons from custody and appeals from the denial of the 
motions were civil in nature.  Id. at 263, 316 S.E.2d at 
443-44.4  We likened such motions and appeals to petitions 
for habeas corpus and appeals from orders granting habeas 
relief.  Id.  We observed that “ ‘habeas corpus is a civil 
and not a criminal proceeding’ and ‘in no sense a 
continuation of the criminal prosecution.’ ”  Id. at 262, 
316 S.E.2d at 443 (quoting Smyth v. Godwin, 188 Va. 753, 
760, 51 S.E.2d 230, 233, cert. denied, 337 U.S. 946 
(1949)). 
 
Southerly did not respond on brief to the 
Commonwealth's argument concerning the Court of Appeals' 
jurisdiction to entertain Southerly’s appeal.  However, 
during oral argument, Southerly attempted to distinguish 
Crowley by saying it was “more of a straight habeas case, 
it's more of a case involving not the criminal proceedings 
but a person who is already in the Department of 
Corrections system and is bringing his action against the 
Department of Corrections."  Southerly maintained that his 
motion to vacate "directly challenged the circuit court's 
power to render a final judgment of conviction in a 
                     
4 Crowley was decided before the Court of Appeals came 
into existence on January 1, 1985. 
 
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criminal proceeding," and "that type of motion . . . is 
clearly within even the Court of Appeals' limited . . . 
statutory jurisdiction," a position "the Court of Appeals 
has subsequently adopted in the Asby v. Commonwealth case, 
[34 Va. App. 217, 539 S.E.2d 742 (2001)], . . . citing its 
decision in the Nicely v. Commonwealth case, [23 Va. App. 
327, 477 S.E.2d 11 [1996)]." 
 
In Asby, the Court of Appeals held that although a 
motion to vacate “a conviction may be civil in nature," it 
nonetheless had jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from 
the denial of such a motion because "the underlying charges 
. . . were criminal."  34 Va. App. at 221, 539 S.E.2d at 
744.  In Nicely, a circuit court held it had no 
jurisdiction to consider either an appeal from a seven-day 
administrative suspension of a driver's license under Code 
§ 46.2-391.2 or a motion to dismiss the underlying driving 
while intoxicated charge.  The Commonwealth challenged the 
Court of Appeals' jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from 
the circuit court's judgment.  The Court of Appeals 
rejected the challenge, saying it had jurisdiction because 
"the underlying charge is criminal."  23 Va. App. at 329 
n.1, 477 S.E.2d at 12 n.1.  The Court of Appeals also said 
it was "[t]he rationale of Brame [v. Commonwealth, 252 Va. 
122, 126, 476 S.E.2d 177, 179 (1996)], . . . that the 
 
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underlying charge controls the appeal."  23 Va. App. at 329 
n.1, 477 S.E.2d at 12 n.1. 
 
However, we merely said in Brame that "[b]ecause a 
charge of unreasonably refusing to submit to a blood or 
breath test is not criminal but administrative and civil in 
nature, an appeal lies directly to this Court."  252 Va. at 
126, 476 S.E.2d at 179.  Naturally, if the underlying 
charge is civil in nature, the appeal is also civil in 
nature.  This is not to say that if the underlying charge 
is criminal in nature, the appeal is automatically criminal 
in nature.  If we were to follow that rationale, we would 
have to ignore our previous characterization of petitions 
for habeas corpus and appeals from judgments on habeas 
petitions as civil in nature.  Criminal charges underlie 
the great bulk of habeas cases, and we are unaware of any 
disagreement with the proposition that petitions for habeas 
corpus and appeals from orders in habeas cases are civil in 
nature. 
 
Rather, it is the nature of the method employed to 
seek relief from a criminal conviction and the 
circumstances under which the method is employed that 
determine whether an appeal is civil or criminal in nature.  
If the method consists of an appeal from the conviction 
itself or from action on motions filed and disposed of 
 
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while the trial court retains jurisdiction over the case, 
the appeal is criminal in nature.  But when, as here, the 
relief requested by way of a motion to vacate is a 
declaration that the trial court lacked the jurisdiction to 
take the action sought to be vacated and the motion is not 
filed until after the conviction has become final, then the 
motion and the appeal from the trial court's action thereon 
are both civil in nature.   
 
In any event, the statute governing the Court of 
Appeals’ appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases is what 
really controls.  Code § 17.1-406(A) provides that "[a]ny 
aggrieved party may present a petition for appeal to the 
Court of Appeals from . . . any final conviction in a 
circuit court of . . . a crime."  The statutory language is 
restrictive, limiting the Court of Appeals’ appellate 
jurisdiction to appeals from final criminal convictions and 
from action on motions filed and disposed of while the 
trial court retains jurisdiction over the case.  That 
entire process is purely criminal in nature, unlike a 
motion to vacate filed long after the conviction has become 
final and seeking a declaration that the trial court lacked 
jurisdiction to take the action that is sought to be 
vacated.  This latter process is “in no sense a 
continuation of the criminal prosecution.”  Crowley, 227 
 
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Va. at 262, 316 S.E.2d at 443.  Consequently, it is 
definitely civil in nature. 
 
We hold, therefore, that the Court of Appeals lacked  
jurisdiction to entertain Southerly's appeal, and we will 
reverse that court’s judgment and declare its decision a 
nullity.  It does not follow, however, that the appeal must 
be dismissed.  Under Code § 8.01-677.1, if an appeal is 
otherwise proper and timely but the appellate court in 
which it is filed rules it should have been filed in the 
other appellate court, the court so ruling shall transfer 
the appeal to the other court. 
 
Under the circumstances, the Court of Appeals should 
have transferred Southerly's appeal to this Court.  Without 
such a transfer, this Court lacks the jurisdiction to 
decide the question presented by the Commonwealth's 
argument that notice to Southerly's father was unnecessary.  
Accordingly, we will remand the case to the Court of 
Appeals with direction to transfer the matter to this Court 
"for further proceedings in accordance with the rules of 
[this] court."  Id. 
Reversed and remanded. 
 
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