Court Opinion

ID: 9846213
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:36:58.806011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:35.395188
License: Public Domain

KELSEY, J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion imposes a duty to inquire, ante, 48 Va.App. at 574-576, 633 S.E.2d at 214-216, on police officers whenever there appears any ambiguity in the scope of their consensual searching. This proposition strikes me as an unwarranted departure from existing Fourth Amendment doctrine, which historically has examined the permissible scope of a search solely in terms of reasonable reliance on actual or apparent authority.
Applying the traditional standard, I agree with the trial court that the officers in this case did not act unreasonably by relying on the unqualified consent of the homeowner, Glenn’s grandfather, to search his home and everything in it that one would ordinarily expect to be within the scope of that consent—like an unidentified, unlocked, unclaimed backpack lying on the floor of a room within the home. This is particularly true here because Glenn never once objected to the search of the room or the backpack. Nor did he express or imply anything suggesting an exclusive privacy interest in either.
I also read the majority opinion to hold that the conditional guilty plea statute, Code § 19.2-254, has effectively repealed by implication the harmless error statute, Code § 8.01-678, for all appeals following a conditional guilty plea. No Virginia case can be cited for this proposition. Nor does anything in the text of the conditional plea statute or in the contextual logic underlying the statute compel such a conclusion. Had the General Assembly intended to render the harmless error statute inapplicable as a matter of law to conditional guilty pleas, I believe it would have said so.
On both grounds, therefore, I respectfully dissent.
*589I.
“On appeal from a denial of a suppression motion, we must review the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, giving it the benefit of any reasonable inferences.” Kyer v. Commonwealth, 45 Va.App. 473, 477, 612 S.E.2d 213, 215 (2005) (en banc) (citation omitted).
Believing that Glenn had just robbed a man, police officers went to the home of Glenn’s grandparents where Glenn had been living for about two months. Glenn answered the door and was immediately arrested. The officers asked Glenn’s grandfather for permission to search his home. Unable to speak because of a medical condition, the grandfather nodded his head in agreement. The officers then asked the grandfather if Glenn paid rent. The grandfather shook his head no. When asked if Glenn was in fact his grandson, the grandfather nodded yes.
The officers went to Glenn’s bedroom, identified by Glenn as the “room he slept in.” The officers found, among other things, boxes containing his grandmother’s clothing in Glenn’s bedroom. The officers then went to a second room, identified by Glenn as a room that he also slept in on occasion. There, the officers discovered a backpack on the floor. Nothing suggested to the officers the backpack was locked, used for any particular purpose, or owned by any particular person. During this time, Glenn stood nearby and voiced no objections or concerns about the search. The officers opened the backpack and found evidence implicating Glenn in the suspected robbery.
While in police custody, Glenn confessed to the robbery. He had been given Miranda warnings on three occasions prior to the confession. He did not request legal counsel or insist upon his right to remain silent. Instead, while at the police station, Glenn wrote out a full confession by hand in which he admitted that he and an accomplice robbed the victim at gunpoint. Glenn also gave a verbal confession in which he alerted the officers to where the weapon used in the robbery *590could be found. Officers later found the weapon exactly where Glenn said it would be.
Prior to trial, Glenn filed two motions to suppress. The first sought to exclude from evidence the incriminating item (the victim’s stolen cell phone) found in the backpack, asserting that the search violated the Fourth Amendment. The second challenged the admissibility of his confession on Fifth Amendment grounds. Glenn did not, however, argue that the search of his backpack somehow tainted his confession. Nor does he make this claim on appeal.
At the suppression hearing, Glenn’s grandmother took the stand on his behalf and testified that the backpack was his. The grandmother, however, conceded that Glenn did not pay rent. Nor did he have exclusive access to, or control over, any room in the house. She agreed to the characterization of the first room searched as “Keith’s room” and “his bedroom.” The woman’s clothes in Glenn’s bedroom were hers, she admitted. There were no locks on the doors of either room.
The trial court denied Glenn’s motion to suppress, reasoning that the grandfather’s consent to search was given “without reservation or qualification.” The scope of this consent, the trial court held, provided the officers with apparent authority to open the backpack. The officers had no reason to question this authority, the court pointed out, because they knew Glenn’s grandfather owned the home, Glenn did not pay rent to stay there, a “mixture of personal property” was found in Glenn’s principal bedroom, and nothing suggested Glenn had an exclusive privacy interest in the backpack. To be sure, the trial court found, Glenn “was present at the search, observed the search and took no action to countermand his grandfather’s permission by advising the police that he objected to the search of that portion of the residence he later claimed he occupied.”
At trial, Glenn entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his opportunity to appeal his convictions. After finding the plea to be voluntary, the trial court received a factual proffer from the Commonwealth. The prosecutor reported that Glenn *591and an accomplice robbed the victim at gunpoint, taking from him a cell phone and cash. Glenn confessed to the robbery and advised the police where to find the weapon. The trial court asked Glenn if he would “accept the proffered testimony.” Glenn’s counsel said they did. His counsel added that the police found the weapon based upon Glenn’s confession.21 The trial court ended the colloquy this way:
Court: Mr. Purnell, do you stipulate that the evidence, if proven, would be sufficient to find the defendant guilty?
Glenn’s Counsel: I do, Your Honor.
Court: Does the defense wish to offer any evidence other than the proffer?
Glenn’s Counsel: No.
Court: Would you please stand, Mr. Glenn? Based on the evidence that the Court has heard, the Court will find you guilty as charged....
Based upon the Commonwealth’s proffered evidence (stipulated by Glenn as sufficient) and Glenn’s guilty plea (previously found to be voluntary), the trial court convicted Glenn of robbery, in violation of Code § 18.2-58, and conspiracy to commit robbery, in violation of Code § 18.2-22.
Glenn then filed a petition for appeal asserting that his convictions should be overturned because the trial court erroneously denied his two motions to suppress. Pursuant to Code § 17.1-407(D), a three-judge panel of our Court rejected Glenn’s challenge to the admissibility of his confession. The Court held that, under the circumstances of this case, Glenn “failed to make a clear and unambiguous assertion of his right to remain silent.” The Court, however, granted further review of Glenn’s challenge to the admissibility of the evidence found during the backpack search.
This appeal comes to us in an unusual posture. The Court has already ruled that the trial court properly denied Glenn’s motion to suppress his confession. It necessarily follows that *592the trial court correctly accepted thé evidence of Glenn’s confession (coupled with the corroborating evidence that it led police to the weapon used in the robbery) in support of the court’s finding of guilt. For appellate purposes, two questions remain to be answered:
A. Did the trial court err in denying the motion to suppress the incriminating evidence found during the backpack search?
B. If so, was any such error harmless given our holding that the trial court correctly denied Glenn’s motion to suppress his confession making it fully admissible, along with the stipulated proffer, in support of Glenn’s guilty plea?
The majority concludes the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule forbids the trial court from considering the backpack evidence and, as a matter of law, the doctrine of harmless error has been superseded by the conditional guilty plea statute. I disagree with both conclusions.
II.
A. The Motion to Suppress—Scope of Consent to Search
Though the ultimate question whether the officers violated the Fourth Amendment triggers de novo scrutiny, “we defer to the trial court’s findings of “historical fact’ and give ‘due weight to the inferences drawn from those facts by resident judges and local law enforcement officers.’ ” Slayton v. Commonwealth, 41 Va.App. 101, 105, 582 S.E.2d 448, 449-50 (2003) (citations omitted). To prevail on appeal, “the defendant must show that the trial court’s denial of his suppression motion, when the evidence is considered in the light most favorable to the prosecution, was reversible error.” Id. (quoting Whitfield v. Commonwealth, 265 Va. 358, 361, 576 S.E.2d 463, 464 (2003)).
In this ease, Glenn argues that his grandfather’s consent to search the home did not extend to opening the backpack and examining its contents. The trial court disagreed, as do I.
*593As a general rule, “a search authorized by consent is wholly valid.” Kyer, 45 Va.App. at 483, 612 S.E.2d at 218 (quoting Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 222, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973)). “Police officers act in full accord with the law when they ask citizens for consent. It reinforces the rule of law for the citizen to advise the police of his or her wishes and for the police to act in reliance on that understanding.” Barkley v. Commonwealth, 39 Va.App. 682, 696, 576 S.E.2d 234, 241 (2003) (quoting United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 207, 122 S.Ct. 2105, 153 L.Ed.2d 242 (2002)).22
Consent to search can be given by one with actual authority or apparent authority. Actual authority exists if the consenting party has a privacy interest in the premises to be searched, and thus, a concomitant right to waive that interest and authorize the search. See United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 170-71, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974), Apparent authority exists if it merely appears to a reasonable officer that the consenting party has “authority over the premises.” Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 188, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990). When multiple parties share privacy interests in the premises, any one of them with “common authority over the premises” may consent to the search despite the lack of express concurrence by others possessing a shared privacy interest. Id. at 181, 110 S.Ct. at 2798.
Here, the trial court found that the grandfather owned the home and consented to its search. The police knew Glenn was staying in his grandfather’s home and confirmed that Glenn did not have the status of a renter. From these facts, the police had ample reason to accept the grandfather’s consent to search the home and every room in it. No circumstances suggested to the police that Glenn had preserved a private enclave within the home or had somehow undermined the *594grandfather’s authority over all areas of his own home. The police, therefore, crossed no Fourth Amendment boundary by searching either of the two bedrooms in which Glenn slept.
But that boundary was crossed, Glenn argues, when the police opened the backpack and looked inside. Consent should have been specifically requested for searching the backpack, Glenn reasons. Absent such specificity, the majority opinion agrees, the officers have a duty of “further inquiry” whenever there is any “ambiguous situation” concerning the scope of the consent as it applies to “closed containers.” Ante, 48 Va.App. at 574-576, 633 S.E.2d at 214-216. I believe this new duty of “further inquiry” to be inconsistent with settled Fourth Amendment doctrine.
Consent to search a space includes consent to search containers within that space where a reasonable officer could construe the consent to extend to the container. See Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 251, 111 S.Ct. 1801, 1804, 114 L.Ed.2d 297 (1991). This principle applies to automobiles, Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 302, 119 S.Ct. 1297, 1302, 143 L.Ed.2d 408 (1999), as well as physical premises, United States v. Melgar, 227 F.3d 1038, 1041-42 (7th Cir.2000). “The rule regarding containers found in automobiles applies also to containers found in premises.” 27 J. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice § 641.44, at 641-151 (3d ed.2006). “A grant of consent to search premises includes consent to search closed containers found within the premises unless the officers have reliable information that the container is not under the control of the person granting consent.” Id. (emphasis added).
This conclusion stems from the observation that a “lawful search of fixed premises generally extends to the entire area in which the object of the search may be found and is not limited by the possibility that separate acts of entry or opening may be required to complete the search.” United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 820-21, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 2170-71, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982). The consent to search a home may reasonably include the “authority to open closets, chests, *595drawers, and containers” in which the object of the search may be found. Id. at 821, 102 S.Ct. at 2171. “When a legitimate search is under way, and when its purpose and its limits have been precisely defined, nice distinctions between closets, drawers, and containers, in the case of a home, or between glove compartments, upholstered seats, trunks, and wrapped packages, in the case of a vehicle, must give way to the interest in the prompt and efficient completion of the task at hand.” Id. This reasoning “applies equally to all containers, as indeed we believe it must.” Id. at 822, 102 S.Ct. at 2171.23
Glenn’s duty-of-inquiry argument, particularly the version of it accepted by the majority, inverts the reasonableness test of the Fourth Amendment. The constitutional standard forbidding unreasonable searches has been retooled, in effect, to demand the most reasonable searches. Under the conventional view, the “ambiguous situation” described by the majority, ante, 48 Va.App. at 574-575, 633 S.E.2d at 214, is simply a fact pattern where reasonable officers could differ as to the scope of apparent authority. They may get it wrong, Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 186, 110 S.Ct. at 2800, but they nonetheless should be given the benefit of the doubt where reasonable people could construe the circumstances differently. As the Seventh Circuit has explained,
the real question for closed container searches is which way the risk of uncertainty should run. Is such a search permissible only if the police have positive knowledge that the closed container is also under the authority of the person who originally consented to the search ... or is it permissible if the police do not have reliable information that the container is not under the authorizer’s control.
*596Melgar, 227 F.3d at 1041 (emphasis in original). Rejecting the duty-to-inquire argument, the Seventh Circuit noted the impracticability of such a doctrine and its express rejection by the United States Supreme Court in other contexts:
A contrary rule [recognizing a duty of further inquiry] would impose an impossible burden on the police. It would mean that they could never search closed containers within a dwelling (including hotel rooms) without asking the person whose consent is being given ex ante about every item they might encounter. We note that there is no possibility of such a rule for automobile searches, because the Supreme Court has already authorized this type of container search in that context. See Ross, supra; Houghton, supra. Our conclusion here rests in part on the discussion in Houghton that indicates that the container rule rests on general principles of Fourth Amendment law that do not depend on the special attributes of automobile searches.
Id. at 1042. The proper standard, therefore, does not forbid the container search whenever it involves an “ambiguous situation,” ante, 48 Va.App. at 574-575, 633 S.E.2d at 214. The Fourth Amendment prohibition applies only when no reasonable officer could interpret the scope of consent—when given by one with apparent authority over the premises—to include containers found on the premises.
Stated another way, a general consent to search “includes consent to search closed containers found within the premises unless the officers have reliable information that the container is not under the control of the person granting consent.” 27 Moore’s Federal Practice, supra, § 641.44, at 641-151 (emphasis added); see United States v. Ladell, 127 F.3d 622, 624 (7th Cir.1997) (holding that a mother had “apparent authority to consent” to a search of her adult son’s bedroom, including a closed vinyl bag found in the bedroom).
Reinforcing these traditional principles, the United States Supreme Court in Georgia v. Randolph, — U.S. —, —, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 1520, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006), recently addressed the underpinnings of the apparent authority doctrine *597as applied to the “co-occupant consent” situation. The Court pointed out that police must be permitted to rely on “widely shared social expectations” when discerning the apparent authority of one co-inhabitant to consent to a search of an area in which another co-inhabitant has a dual privacy interest. Id. at 1521.
“Disputed permission,” however, undermines that reliance because no reasonable officer could rely on one co-inhabitant’s apparent authority to speak for another when the person spoken for is, at that very moment, “expressly refusing consent” to the search. Id. at 1524, 1526. But if he does not object, the co-inhabitant’s apparent authority remains secure. As the majority in Randolph conceded,
we have to admit that we are drawing a fine line; if a potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is in fact at the door and objects, the co-tenant’s permission does not suffice for a reasonable search, whereas the potential objector, nearby but not invited to take part in the threshold colloquy, loses out.
Id. at 1527. This approach places the burden on the objector to assert his objection. As Randolph explains, for the very reason that
it would be unjustifiably impractical to require the police to take affirmative steps to confirm the actual authority of a consenting individual whose authority was apparent, we think it would needlessly limit the capacity of the police to respond to ostensibly legitimate opportunities in the field if we were to hold that reasonableness required the police to take affirmative steps to find a potentially objecting co-tenant before acting on the permission they had already received. There is no ready reason to believe that efforts to invite a refusal would make a difference in many cases, whereas every co-tenant consent case would turn into a test about the adequacy of the police’s efforts to consult with a potential objector.
*598Id. at 1527-28 (emphasis added). The reasoning of Randolph, therefore, eschews the duty-to-inquire thesis advocated by Glenn and adopted by the majority.
Applying these principles here, I believe the trial court correctly held that the factual circumstances gave the officers no reason to believe that the grandfather’s consent to search his house did not include the backpack laying on the floor in one of the rooms of the house. The grandfather owned the home, after all, and had not encumbered his prerogatives as a homeowner by entering into any sort of contractual relationship with Glenn. His relationship with Glenn was not one of landlord-tenant, but of grandfather-grandson. The backpack was not locked. It was not found in some secretive place hidden from plain view. No information on the backpack revealed to whom it belonged—unless we were to speculate that grandsons, but never grandfathers, use backpacks. The officers did not find the backpack in Glenn’s principal bedroom. Finally, as the trial court held, though Glenn was “present at the search” and “observed the search,” he “took no action to countermand his grandfather’s permission” and never once advised the police that he objected.
Given these circumstances, I fully agree with the trial court that the grandfather’s consent to search the house was “without reservation or qualification” and included a search of the backpack. Nothing in this fact pattern put the officers on notice that the grandfather had been excluded from using the backpack or that Glenn asserted any exclusive privacy interest in it. A reasonable officer, therefore, could construe the scope of the grandfather’s consent to the search of his home to permit the opening of an unidentified, unlocked, unclaimed backpack lying on the floor.
B. Harmless Error & Conditional Guilty Pleas
After concluding that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by looking inside the backpack, the majority then holds that the harmless error statute does not apply to this case as a matter of law. Though disclaimed, ante, 48 Va.App. at 587 n. 20, 633 S.E.2d at 221 n. 20, the reasoning appears to *599be that the conditional guilty plea statute, Code § 19.2-254, creates a process so inherently incompatible with the harmless error statute, Code § 8.01-678, that the former has implicitly repealed the latter in all appeals involving conditional guilty pleas. No matter how restated, this assertion is wholly unpersuasive to me.
To begin with, the harmless error concept is no mere prudential, judge-made doctrine of appellate review. It is a legislative mandate, part of our statutory law since the early 1900s, limiting the ad judicatory power of Virginia appellate courts.
Whatever may be the law elsewhere, or whatever it may have been aforetime in this State, since the adoption of the Code of 1919 there has existed in this State a statute which puts a limitation on the powers of this court to reverse the judgment of the trial court—a limitation which we must consider on every application for an appeal and on the hearing of every case submitted to our judgment.
Walker v. Commonwealth, 144 Va. 648, 652, 131 S.E. 230, 231 (1926) (emphasis added). The General Assembly “deliberately engrafted” the harmless error doctrine into the statutory law of the Commonwealth. Irvine v. Carr, 163 Va. 662, 669, 177 S.E. 208, 211 (1934).
The harmless error limitation on judicial power applies to criminal cases no less than civil cases. Clay v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 253, 259, 546 S.E.2d 728, 731 (2001). And it has never been a begrudged limitation, but rather one “favored” by Virginia courts, Windsor v. Carlton, 136 Va. 652, 655, 118 S.E. 222, 223 (1923), because it so obviously grows out “of the imperative demands of common sense,” Oliver v. Commonwealth, 151 Va. 533, 541, 145 S.E. 307, 309 (1928), and consequently has been “deeply embedded in our jurisprudence,” Gilland v. Commonwealth, 184 Va. 223, 235, 35 S.E.2d 130, 134 (1945). For these reasons, Code § 8.01-678 makes “harmless-error review required in all cases.” Ferguson v. Commonwealth, 240 Va. ix, ix, 396 S.E.2d 675, 675 (1990) (emphasis in original and text in parenthetical).
*600Glenn essentially argues that, as a matter of law, the harmless error statute has been partially displaced by the conditional guilty plea statute. Virginia, however, follows a long tradition of disfavoring judicial interpretations that in effect hold that one statute has “partially repealed by implication” another. Sexton v. Cornett, 271 Va. 251, 256-57, 623 S.E.2d 898, 901 (2006). This tradition requires us to employ “a presumption against a legislative intent to repeal where the later statute does not amend the former or refer expressly to it.” Id.;see also Kremer v. Chem. Constr. Corp., 456 U.S. 461, 468, 102 S.Ct. 1883, 1890, 72 L.Ed.2d 262 (1982) (recognizing the presumption against the “implied partial repeal” of an earlier statute by a later one).
Nothing in the text of the conditional guilty plea statute suggests that it has partially repealed the harmless error statute. The conditional guilty plea statute merely preserves a right to appeal a criminal conviction on grounds (like a pretrial order denying a suppression motion) that would have otherwise been waived by an unconditional guilty plea. What is on appeal, however, is not the interlocutory order denying the suppression motion—it is the conviction itself. As the statute makes plain, the appeal is “from the judgment” entered against the defendant. Code § 19.2-254.
Understood this way, conditional guilty pleas “are like all others, except that the accused reserves a right to contest on appeal a pretrial issue on which he lost.” John L. Costello, Virginia Criminal Law & Procedure § 46.2-2, at 617 (3d ed.2002). But, here again, the right preserved is the right to appeal. That right necessarily must be exercised with the expectation that all principles ordinarily applicable to appeals, like the venerable doctrine of harmless error, would likewise apply—particularly where, as in Virginia, the legislative enactment of the doctrine acts as an express limitation on the appellate court’s powers.
The implied repeal, Glenn responds, can be inferred from the conditional guilty plea statute for it specifically allows an appellant to withdraw a guilty plea if he “prevails” on appeal. *601See Code § 19.2-254. To me, this argument is at once circular and counterintuitive. No criminal defense attorney would tell a client that he prevailed on appeal after receiving an appellate opinion finding the alleged error to be harmless and thus the conviction valid. A criminal defendant prevails on appeal by winning an acquittal or by reducing his punishment. From any practical point of view, appellate success hardly can be claimed when a criminal defendant merely secures from the appellate judges their intellectual acquiescence to the merits of his argument followed immediately by their declaration that, in any event, it does not change the result. Cf. Polston v. Commonwealth, 255 Va. 500, 504, 498 S.E.2d 924, 926 (1998) (ruling a conditional guilty plea would be affirmed “regardless of the actual validity of the search warrant” because the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule would apply). To prevail on appeal means to demonstrate reversible, not irreversible, error.
At any rate, Glenn concludes, harmless error cannot be applied in this case because there has been no trial and thus no way of knowing if the confession could be corroborated by other evidence. Not so. There was a trial. Under Virginia constitutional law, after receiving a guilty plea, “the court shall try the case.” Va. Const., art. I, § 8 (emphasis added); see also Code § 19.2-257 (providing that, following a guilty plea, “the court shall hear and determine the case”). And that is just what happened in this case. At trial, the Commonwealth proffered evidence that Glenn’s confession advised police where to find the weapon used in the robbery. Glenn’s counsel advised the trial court that Glenn “accept[ed] the proffered testimony.”24 Glenn’s counsel immediately added that, in fact, the police found the weapon used in the robbery based upon Glenn’s confession. The trial court asked Glenn’s *602counsel if he wanted to “offer any evidence” in addition to the agreed proffer. He declined to offer any.25
Glenn does not argue (and I would not accept it if he did) that, if applicable, the harmless error doctrine cannot be satisfied. The proper admission of a corroborated confession renders harmless the improper admission of mere cumulative evidence. See, e.g., Luginbyhl v. Commonwealth, 48 Va.App. 58, 66, 628 S.E.2d 74, 78-79 (2006) (en banc) (finding defendant’s “corroborated” confession rendered “harmless” any “constitutional error” in admitting cumulative incriminating evidence); United States v. Jimenez, 419 F.3d 34, 41-42 (1st Cir.2005) (finding that the cumulative evidence “pales in light” of the defendant’s voluntary and corroborated confession); Hocker v. State, 840 So.2d 197, 215 (Ala.Crim.App.2002) (holding that any error in admitting evidence of a “collateral bad act” was harmless in light of defendant’s corroborated confession). To be sure, a “confession is like no other evidence” and is “probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1257, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). By rejecting Glenn’s only challenge to the admission of his corroborated confession, we rendered harmless any error by the trial court in admitting the mere cumulative evidence (the victim’s cell-phone) found in the backpack.
*603Finally, I offer only a brief rejoinder to the many citations relied on by the majority as justification for abandoning harmless error in this case. As I read them, most of these authorities merely point out the obvious: that, absent a sufficient factual record, the harmless error analysis cannot be competently performed by an appellate court.26 I certainly agree. The difference here, though, is that we have a sufficient factual record. Other authorities relied upon by the majority have serious precedential limitations,27 while still others I think have been either misunderstood28 or understat*604ed.29 But, most important, not one of these citations addresses the unique procedures governing the trials of guilty pleas in Virginia’s circuit courts or the General Assembly’s codification of the harmless error doctrine as a limitation on appellate court power.
III.
In sum, the trial court did not misapply Fourth Amendment principles when it denied Glenn’s motion to suppress the evidence found in the search of the backpack. The majority’s invocation of a duty to inquire for container searches rests on an unwarranted extension of existing search-and-seizure precedent. The majority also errs in not conducting a harmless error analysis given our prior ruling rejecting Glenn’s only legal challenge to the use of his confession in support of the finding of guilt. For these reasons, I would affirm Glenn’s convictions.

. Glenn's counsel also claimed the weapon was a "BB gun,” but the Commonwealth replied that "it sure doesn’t look like one."

. The "presence of consent” presents "a factual question.” Hargraves v. Commonwealth, 37 Va.App. 299, 307, 557 S.E.2d 737, 741 (2002) (citing Bynum v. Commonwealth, 23 Va.App. 412, 418, 477 S.E.2d 750, 753 (1996)). We thus defer, unless plainly wrong, to the factfinder and give "due weight to the inferences drawn from those facts by resident judges and local law enforcement officers.” Id. (citations omitted).

. The majority comes to the opposite conclusion, in part, based on the belief, see ante, 48 Va.App. at 569, 633 S.E.2d at 212, that "Clearly, 'an individual has a heightened expectation of privacy in the contents of a closed container.’ " This proposition, however, was clear only to the two-Justice dissent in Jimeno (from which the quoted language comes), not from the Jimeno majority's reasoning or holding. Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 253, 111 S.Ct. 1801, 1805, 114 L.Ed.2d 297 (1991) (Marshall, J., & Stevens, J., dissenting). See also ante, 48 Va.App. at 569, & 575 n. 9, 633 S.E.2d at 212, last line, & 215 n. 9 (where the majority continues to quote from the Jimeno dissent).

. Under settled principles, a "unilateral avowal of counsel of testimony that could be presented constitutes a proper proffer, if unchallenged." Bloom v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 814, 821, 554 S.E.2d 84, 87 (2001); Whittaker v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 966, 969, 234 S.E.2d 79, 81 (1977).

. That said, the validity of a guilty plea does not require a proffer of evidence by the prosecution. "In accepting a plea of guilty, any Virginia trial judge is, of course, free to hear the evidence he deems necessary,” but that does not mean "evidence must be heard upon a plea of guilty.” Kibert v. Commonwealth, 216 Va. 660, 664, 222 S.E.2d 790, 793 (1976) (emphasis omitted). Nothing in Virginia law "requires the introduction of evidence to sustain a conviction based upon a plea of guilty in a criminal case.” Id. at 665, 222 S.E.2d at 793; see generally Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 316, 103 S.Ct. 2368, 2374, 76 L.Ed.2d 595 (1983). So, in cases where, unlike here, there is no proffer at trial of the dispositively incriminating evidence, it may indeed be impractical to conduct a harmless error analysis. From this sensible observation, however, Glenn insensibly reasons that harmless error is thus inapplicable as a matter of law to all appeals from all conditional guilty pleas.

. The majority cites People v. Grant, 45 N.Y.2d 366, 408 N.Y.S.2d 429, 380 N.E.2d 257 (1978), as one of the "two most authoritative” cases rejecting the harmless error analysis. Ante, 48 Va.App. at 582, 633 S.E.2d at 218. I agree Grant did just that. But the more important point is why. The court explained that the doctrine is "difficult to apply to guilty pleas” because absent “a trial there will be little if any evidence in the record, apart from the proof which should have been excluded,” thus leaving the appellate court "rarely” able to competently conduct a harmless error analysis. Id. at 264-65. In our case, however, our competence comes from a stipulated, corroborated confession by the defendant—one which we have held the trial court properly refused to suppress.
People v. Hill, 12 Cal.3d 731, 117 Cal.Rptr. 393, 528 P.2d 1 (1974), the other of the "two most authoritative" cases, ante, 48 Va.App. at 582, 633 S.E.2d at 218, pointed out that the doctrine could not practically be applied because there "simply is no intelligent means of assessing the impact of a particular erroneous refusal to suppress evidence.” Id. at 29. Here, too, the holding presupposes an appellate record (unlike ours) which lacks a sufficient factual basis to conduct the harmless error inquiry.

. The majority cites State v. Monahan, 76 Wis.2d 387, 251 N.W.2d 421, 426 (Wis.1977), for the proposition that the “harmless error doctrine is inapplicable in the context of an appeal from a conditional guilty plea.” Ante, 48 Va.App. at 585, 633 S.E.2d at 219. The same court later said that it did not "read Monahan to preclude, in any way, the use of a harmless error approach” in appeals of conditional guilty pleas. State v. Armstrong, 225 Wis.2d 121, 591 N.W.2d 604, 604 (Wis.1999) (per curiam). The defendant in Armstrong entered his guilty plea pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 971.31(10)—which, like Virginia’s conditional plea statute, permits an appeal of an "order denying a motion to suppress evidence” despite "the fact that such judgment was entered upon a plea of guilty.” Id. Cf. Ante, 48 Va.App. at 585 n. 17, 633 S.E.2d at 220 n. 17 (mistakenly assuming that Armstrong "did not involve an appeal of a conditional guilty plea”).

. Footnote 13, ante, 48 Va.App. at 580-581, 633 S.E.2d at 217 n.13, cites with approval United States v. Lace, 669 F.2d 46 (2d Cir.1982), suggesting that only outcome-determinative issues should be allowed under the conditional guilty plea procedure. Footnote 14, ante, 48 *604Va.App. at 581, 633 S.E.2d at 218 n. 14, rejects this approach (specifically the Fourth Circuit’s restatement of it in United States v. Bundy, 392 F.3d 641 (4th Cir.2004), which relied on Lace as authority) on the ground that it constitutes an exercise of "judicial fiat.” Ante, 48 Va.App. at 581 n. 14, 633 S.E.2d at 218 n. 14. In any event, this principle—followed by the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Circuits—merely places the onus on the trial court to refuse its consent to conditional guilty pleas that would produce appeals destined to fall apart on appeal because of the continuing applicability of the harmless error doctrine. As Judge Newman’s concurring opinion in Lace cautioned, a guilty plea "with a reservation of appellate rights should not be a device to circumvent the harmless error rule.” Lace, 669 F.2d at 57 n. 7. The majority’s opinion in our case, I fear, has done just that.

. Footnote 16, ante, 48 Va.App. at 584-585, 633 S.E.2d at 219 n. 16, dismisses the Tenth Circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Rivera-Nevarez, 418 F.3d 1104 (10th Cir.2005), contending that it did not "apply the harmless error doctrine in its traditional sense.” I disagree. The court expressly found "no reason to believe that a party appealing” pursuant to a conditional guilty plea was "exempt from Rule 52(a)’s [harmless error] requirement that 'any error ... that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.’ ” Id. at 1112 n. 13.