Title: Commonwealth v. Pannell
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 011570
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: April 19, 2002

Present:  All the Justices 
 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
v.  Record No. 011570    OPINION BY JUSTICE ELIZABETH B. LACY 
 
 
 
April 19, 2002 
DANZELL PANNELL 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the use 
of the term "original proceedings" formerly contained in Code 
§ 16.1-291 refers to the adjudicatory or dispositional phase 
of a juvenile proceeding.*
 
In 1997, Danzell Pannell pled guilty to a charge of 
unauthorized use of an automobile in the City of Alexandria 
Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court and was placed 
on probation.  Two years later, in 1999, the juvenile court 
found that Pannell had violated the conditions of his 
probation and revoked his probation.  Pannell appealed the 
juvenile court judgment to the circuit court, arguing that 
former Code § 16.1-291 required the exclusion of hearsay 
evidence and use of a reasonable doubt standard when 
determining whether he violated the terms of his probation.  
The circuit court rejected Pannell's arguments, found him in 
violation of the terms of his probation, and committed him to 
                     
* Code § 16.1-291(A) was amended in 2001 and the sentence 
at issue in this case was deleted. 
the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice for an 
indeterminate period. 
 
On appeal, the Court of Appeals, en banc, reversed the 
judgment of the trial court, holding that former Code § 16.1-
291 prohibited the admission of hearsay testimony in a 
probation revocation proceeding and required that the 
violations of probation be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  
Pannell v. Commonwealth, 34 Va. App. 287, 294-95, 540 S.E.2d 
527, 531, aff'd en banc, 35 Va. App. 643, 547 S.E.2d 529 
(2001).  We awarded the Commonwealth an appeal. 
 
In 1999, Code § 16.1-291(A) included the following 
sentence: 
Proceedings to revoke or modify probation, 
protective supervision or parole shall be governed 
by the procedures, safeguards, rights and duties 
applicable to the original proceedings. 
 
Relying on the dictionary or ordinary meaning of the phrase 
"original proceedings," the Court of Appeals concluded that 
the phrase referred to the "'origin or beginning' of the 
relevant prosecution, clearly the adjudicatory phase."  
Pannell, 34 Va. App. at 294, 540 S.E.2d at 531.  The Court of 
Appeals, however, construed the phrase "original proceedings" 
out of context.  Code § 16.1-291 addresses the procedures 
applicable to revocation or modification of probation and 
protective supervision.  Probation and protective supervision 
 
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are dispositions available to the court after the adjudication 
stage of the juvenile proceeding.  Accordingly, the original 
proceedings referred to are not the original adjudicatory 
proceedings in the prosecution, but the original dispositional 
proceedings. 
 
None of Pannell's alternative arguments offered in 
support of the result reached by the Court of Appeals are 
persuasive.  There is no constitutional requirement that a 
court apply a reasonable doubt standard or exclude hearsay 
evidence in an adult probation revocation proceeding, Gagnon 
v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 782, 789 (1973) (applying the due 
process protections established in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 
U.S. 471 (1972), to probation revocation proceedings), nor are 
such standards required in juvenile proceedings.  While 
Pannell argues that imposing such due process protections in 
the juvenile context would have been reasonable, it is equally 
reasonable to assume that the General Assembly intended that 
such protections were not required in juvenile probation 
revocation proceedings just as they were not required in adult 
probation revocation proceedings.  Finally, the General 
Assembly's elimination of the sentence at issue as part of the 
2001 amendments to Code § 16.1-291, does not require a finding 
that the General Assembly's action was undertaken to alter the 
meaning of the phrase "original proceedings." 
 
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For the above reasons, the judgment of the Court of 
Appeals will be reversed and the judgment of the circuit court 
reinstated. 
Reversed and reinstated. 
 
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