Court Opinion

ID: 9608728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:16:44.9869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:08:19.857303
License: Public Domain

Coleman, J.,
with whom Cole, J.* joins, concurring and dissenting.
A majority of the court sitting en banc reverses the trial court and assigns the same reasons expressed by a panel of this court whose opinion is reported at 11 Va. App. 103, 397 S.E.2d 263 (1990). As a member of that panel, I expressed my separate views in an opinion reported in 11 Va. App. at 111, 397 S.E. at 268, in which I concurred with the majority there, as I do here, that the failure of the Commonwealth’s attorney to disclose to the defendant the tape recording of his conversation with Detective Harding was a violation of the trial court’s discovery order and of Rule 3A:11. However, for the reasons which I more fully set forth at 11 Va. App. at 111-14, 397 S.E.2d at 268-70, the trial court did not, in my opinion, commit error when, after discovering the violation, it refused to preclude the playing of the taped conversation in rebuttal and refused to declare a mistrial. Because the defendant had been informed during discovery of the substance of the taped conversation, I do not believe that the court erred by permitting the Commonwealth to introduce the recorded conversation in rebuttal in order to prevent the jury from being misled. I fail to see how disclosure of the tape recorded conversation, which confirmed other testimony, could be considered to have prevented Conway from receiving a fair trial or obtaining substantial justice. Code § 8.01-678. Accordingly, because I would not reverse the judgment of conviction, I dissent.
*723I concur with the majority that the pants and shirt were lawfully seized items of evidence.

 Judge Cole participated in the hearing and decision of this case prior to the effective date of his retirement on April 30, 1991 and thereafter by designation pursuant to Code § 17-116.01.