Title: Roseborough v. Commonwealth
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 100507
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: January 13, 2011

Present:  Hassell, C.J., Koontz, Kinser, Lemons, Goodwyn, and 
Millette, JJ., and Russell, S.J. 
 
LAWRENCE W. ROSEBOROUGH 
 
 
 
            OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 100507 
SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
 
 
 
         January 13, 2011 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
This appeal of a conviction of driving while intoxicated 
turns upon the question whether the defendant was lawfully 
arrested. 
Facts and Proceedings 
 
At about 2:00 a.m. on January 15, 2007, Charles Banks was 
working as a security guard at Watergate at Landmark, an 
apartment complex in the City of Alexandria.  The complex was 
a gated community served by a system of internal private roads 
that were not public streets or highways.  Banks heard a sound 
that he thought was a vehicular accident and ran on foot to 
the scene, arriving a “minute or two” after the crash.  He 
found a pickup truck that had run across the curb of one of 
the private roads and was “stuck” on a hill.  Standing outside 
the open driver’s side door of the truck was the defendant, 
Lawrence W. Roseborough.  Except for additional security 
guards arriving at the scene, no other persons were present.  
Roseborough told Banks that “his buddy crashed the car and ran 
off.” 
 
Officer Seth Weinstein of the Alexandria Police 
Department was dispatched to the scene.  Roseborough told him 
that his friend “Jay” had been driving the truck and “ran into 
a curb and ran off.”  Roseborough told the officer that Jay 
lived in the apartment complex but he didn’t know Jay’s 
address.  He said he had known Jay for several years but he 
didn’t know Jay’s last name or telephone number.  Roseborough 
told the officer that he and Jay had been drinking at a “strip 
club” in the District of Columbia.  Asked why he had come to 
the apartment complex, Roseborough said, “I brought him [Jay] 
back here.”  Roseborough did not live in the complex.  The 
officer testified that Roseborough had an odor of alcohol on 
his breath, his face was “very flushed,” and that he was 
“talkative,”  “slightly confrontational” and “very loud.”  
“His eyes were bloodshot and watery” and he “was swaying a 
little bit as he walked.”  Roseborough refused to take a field 
sobriety test and the officer arrested him for driving while 
intoxicated.  During a search incident to the arrest, the 
officer found the remote keyless entry device for the truck in 
Roseborough’s pocket.  The ignition key was still in the 
truck. 
 
At the police station, after his Miranda rights had been 
read to him, Roseborough agreed to submit to an “Intoxilyzer” 
breath test.  Conducted at 4:03 a.m., the Intoxilizer 5000 
 
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test showed a result of .09 grams of blood alcohol per 210 
liters of breath. 
 
Roseborough was charged by a warrant for driving while 
intoxicated in violation of Code § 18.2-266.  Convicted in the 
general district court, he appealed to the Circuit Court of 
the City of Alexandria.  At a bench trial, the Commonwealth 
sought to admit into evidence the certificate of blood alcohol 
analysis resulting from the Intoxilyzer 5000 test.  
Roseborough objected, arguing inter alia that since the 
defendant was "arrest[ed] for an offense which did not occur 
on a highway[,] it is not a proper arrest for [the] implied 
consent law to apply."  Further, he argued that the 
certificate was inadmissible because "this was not an arrest 
for a misdemeanor offense which occurred in the officer's 
presence, and it was on private property, . . . the officer 
[lacked] authority . . . to arrest the defendant."  The court 
overruled these objections and admitted the certificate into 
evidence.  The court found Roseborough guilty and imposed a 
sentence of confinement in jail for 180 days, all suspended, 
with a $500 fine and suspension of his operator’s license for 
one year. 
 
Roseborough appealed his conviction to the Court of 
Appeals, which granted an appeal limited to the question 
whether the circuit court erred in admitting the certificate 
 
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of analysis over his objection that the test was not 
administered in compliance with the implied consent law.  In a 
memorandum opinion and order dated February 24, 2009, a 
divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.  
Roseborough v. Commonwealth, 53 Va. App. 451, 672 S.E.2d 917 
(2009).  The Court of Appeals granted a rehearing en banc, 
and, by a six to five majority, again affirmed.  Roseborough 
v. Commonwealth, 55 Va. App. 653, 688 S.E.2d 882 (2010).  We 
awarded Roseborough an appeal. 
Analysis 
 
Because this appeal turns on questions of statutory 
interpretation, we apply a de novo standard of review.  
Commonwealth v. Garrett, 276 Va. 590, 599, 667 S.E.2d 739, 744 
(2008). 
 
Code § 18.2-266 makes it unlawful to operate a motor 
vehicle while having a “blood alcohol concentration of . . . 
0.08 grams or more per 210 liters of breath.”  Code § 18.2-
270(A) makes violation of Code § 18.2-266 punishable as a 
Class 1 misdemeanor. 
 
The implied consent law is codified as Code §§ 18.2-268.2 
through -268.12.  Section 18.2-268.2(A) provides, in pertinent 
part, that any person who operates a motor vehicle upon a 
 
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highway as described in Code § 46.2-1001 “shall be deemed . . . 
to have consented” to have samples of his breath taken for 
testing to determine the alcohol content of his blood “if he 
is arrested for violation of § 18.2-266.”  Subsection (B) of 
that statute provides that any person arrested for a violation 
of the parts of Code § 18.2-266 applicable here “shall submit 
to a breath test” if such a test is available.  At the time of 
the offense and trial in this case, Code § 18.2-268.9 provided 
for the qualifications of those administering such tests, 
including the “officer making the arrest.”  That section also 
provided for the preparation and content of certificates 
showing the results of such tests and then provided that 
“[t]his certificate, when attested by the individual 
conducting the breath test, shall be admissible in any court 
in any criminal or civil proceeding as evidence of the facts 
therein stated and of the results of such analysis.”  Former 
Code § 18.2-268.9.2 
 
The effect of the foregoing provisions is to make 
admissible as evidence, for the truth of their content, 
                     
1 Code § 46.2-100 defines “[h]ighway” as "[E]very way or 
place open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular 
travel . . .” including private streets specifically 
designated highways by local ordinance and roads on federal 
property.  There was no evidence that any of those definitions 
apply to this case. 
2 This section was amended and rewritten in 2009.  The 
revisions do not apply to this case. 
 
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documents that would be inadmissible as hearsay in the absence 
of the implied consent law.  Such certificates are also 
testimonial in nature, because they are prepared to assist the 
prosecution in securing a criminal conviction.  They therefore 
have an impact upon a criminal defendant’s Sixth Amendment 
right to confront the witnesses against him.  See Walker v. 
Commonwealth, 281 Va. ___, ___, ___S.E.2d ___, ___ (this day 
decided).  For those reasons, the admissibility of 
certificates of analysis must be carefully limited to 
situations in which the implied consent law, with all of its 
attendant protections, is applicable. 
 
Because the applicability of the implied consent law is 
explicitly limited to situations in which a person is 
“arrested for violation of § 18.2-266,” it must be determined 
whether Roseborough was validly under arrest by Officer 
Weinstein when his breath was tested. 
 
A police officer may, without a warrant, make an arrest 
for a misdemeanor committed in the officer’s presence.  Code 
§ 19.2-81.  At the time of these events,3 Code § 19.2-81 
provided that an officer may also arrest a person without a 
warrant, at the scene of an accident involving a motor vehicle 
on any of the highways of the Commonwealth, on reasonable 
                     
3 Subsequent revisions, not pertinent here, were made by 
2008 Acts chs. 460, 737 and 2010 Acts. ch. 840. 
 
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grounds to believe that a crime has been committed by such 
person.  “In addition, such officer may, within three hours of 
the occurrence of any such accident involving a motor vehicle, 
arrest without a warrant at any location any person whom the 
officer has probable cause to suspect of driving or operating 
such motor vehicle while intoxicated in violation of § 18.6-
266.”  Id.  (Emphasis added.)  The words “such accident” in 
the last-quoted sentence referred back to the italicized 
qualification in the preceding sentence, demonstrating a 
legislative intent to confine an officer’s authority to make a 
warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor in cases of this kind to 
situations in which there has been a vehicular accident on the 
highways of the Commonwealth. 
 
A warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor is invalid unless 
the offense was committed in the presence of the arresting 
officer, or unless the arrest falls within one of the 
exceptions enunciated in Code § 19.2-81.  Penn v. 
Commonwealth, 13 Va. App. 399, 404-05, 412 S.E.2d 189, 192 
(1991), aff'd, 244 Va. 218, 420 S.E.2d 713 (1992). 
 
The single-vehicle accident in the present case occurred 
on or beside a private road in a gated, guarded residential 
complex.  The Commonwealth makes no contention that the road 
was “open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular 
travel."  Consequently, the exceptions to the warrant 
 
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requirement contained in Code § 19.2-81 do not apply.  Officer 
Weinstein, therefore, made an invalid warrantless arrest for a 
misdemeanor not committed in his presence.  Because 
Roseborough was not validly under arrest for violation of Code 
§ 18.2-266 when his breath was tested, the implied consent law 
did not apply and its provisions permitting the certificate of 
analysis to be admitted into evidence were not triggered. 
 
The Court of Appeals held that the officer did not need 
to rely on the implied consent law because Roseborough took 
the breath test voluntarily at the police station.  However 
relevant his willingness may have been to the administration 
of the test, we consider it irrelevant to the question of the 
certificate’s admissibility into evidence.  That question of 
admissibility depended entirely upon the applicability of the 
implied consent law.  For the reasons stated, the Commonwealth 
was unable to rely on that law in the circumstances of this 
case. 
Conclusion 
 
The circuit court erred in overruling Roseborough’s 
objection to admission of the certificate of analysis into 
evidence at trial and the Court of Appeals erred in affirming 
the conviction.  We are unable to determine to what extent, if 
any, the fact-finder relied on the erroneously admitted 
certificate in deciding the case.  Accordingly, we will 
 
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reverse the judgment and remand the case to the Court of 
Appeals with direction to remand the same to the circuit court 
for a new trial consistent with this opinion if the 
Commonwealth be so advised. 
Reversed and remanded. 
 
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