Opinion ID: 1059828
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment

Text: Swisher asserts that the trial court erred by denying his motion to dismiss the indictment charging him with capital murder under Code § 18.2-31(1), which states in relevant part: The following offenses shall constitute capital murder, punishable as a Class 1 felony: 1. The willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of any person in the commission of abduction, as defined in § 18.2-48, when such abduction was committed with the intent to extort money or a pecuniary benefit or with the intent to defile the victim of such abduction; Swisher claims that the term intent to defile fails to inform a defendant or any person of ordinary intelligence of what conduct makes him eligible for a death sentence through commission of capital murder. Continuing, Swisher says that the term intent to defile does not provide sufficient guidance to the jury as it considers whether to impose the sentence of death. Swisher claims that these purported statutory deficiencies contravene his constitutional rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. We find no merit in Swisher's contentions. An act which creates a statutory offense must specify with reasonable certainty and definiteness the conduct which is commanded or prohibited ... so that a person of ordinary intelligence may know what is thereby required of him. Caldwell v. Commonwealth, 198 Va. 454, 458, 94 S.E.2d 537, 540 (1956); McCutcheon v. Commonwealth, 224 Va. 30, 35, 294 S.E.2d 808, 811 (1982). We have stated that the phrase intent to defile is interchangeable, within the meaning of Code § 18.2-48, with the phrase sexually molest. Scott v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 519, 525 n. 2, 323 S.E.2d 572, 576 n. 2 (1984); see Wilson v. Commonwealth, 249 Va. 95, 103-04, 452 S.E.2d 669, 675, cert. denied, 516 U.S. 841, 116 S.Ct. 127, 133 L.Ed.2d 76 (1995). We are of the opinion that a person of ordinary intelligence would also conclude that the term intent to defile is interchangeable with the phrase intent to sexually molest. Thus, we hold that the indictment adequately informed Swisher of the charges against him and that the jury would have concluded that the term intent to defile was synonymous with the phrase intent to sexually molest.