Court Opinion

ID: 9571834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:35:38.599159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:04.726184
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WHITING,
with whom JUSTICE HASSELL joins, concurring.
I join in all of the plurality opinion except its attempt to abolish the common-law and statutory classification of parties to a felony in cases of involuntary manslaughter. If such abolition is advisable, it should be done by the General Assembly, not by judicial fiat.
The General Assembly and this Court have already spoken on the subject. Code § 18.2-18 provides, in pertinent part, that “[i]n the case of every felony, every principal in the second degree and every accessory before the fact may be indicted, tried, convicted and punished in all respects as if a principal in the first degree.” (Emphasis *449added.) And we affirmed a felony conviction of a principal in the first degree for involuntary manslaughter by applying the innocent or unwitting agent rule in Bailey v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 258, 329 S.E.2d 37 (1985).
In Bailey, the defendant, who was angry with the victim, made false statements to the victim and to the police with the intent of luring the police to the victim’s home. Bailey knew that when the police arrived, the victim would be on his front porch, armed with a handgun and prepared for a “shoot out” with Bailey, whom the victim expected to arrive momentarily. Bailey also knew that the then-intoxicated victim was almost completely blind, that he was agitated by their recent vituperative conversations, and that he would probably fire at the police officers, mistaking one of them for Bailey. The victim did shoot at the police officers and was killed when the officers returned fire in self-defense. Even though Bailey was absent from the crime scene, we affirmed his conviction for involuntary manslaughter. We concluded that Bailey was criminally liable as a principal in the first degree, acting through the unwitting policeman who shot the victim. Id. at 262-65, 329 S.E.2d at 40-41.
I see no significant difference between this case and Bailey. In each case, the evidence indicated that the defendant had a motive for making false statements resulting in harm to the victim.
Bailey’s motive grew out of “an extended and vituperative conversation” with the victim in which the victim and Bailey “cursed and threatened each other repeatedly.” Bailey, 229 Va. at 260, 329 S.E.2d at 38. In the present case, the jury could have found that Gallimore’s motive was Branscome’s alleged attempt to rape her.
In each case, the defendant used a third party to accomplish his or her purpose. Bailey did so by taunting the victim and setting up his encounter with the police. The jury could have found that Gallimore accomplished her purpose through false statements calculated to inflame Wanda’s husband, Keith Southern (Southern). Though Gallimore was aware that Southern left to “get the goddamn people responsible [for his wife’s alleged abduction]” in a highly agitated state, and that there would be a pistol at the scene, she still failed to retract her lies.
In each case, the evidence was sufficient to justify a conviction as principal in the first degree for involuntary manslaughter. In Bailey, the evidence was sufficient to show that Bailey “undertook to cause Murdock harm and used the police to accomplish that purpose.” Id. *450at 258, 329 S.E.2d at 40. And in this case the evidence was sufficient to show that Gallimore, as principal in the first degree, undertook to cause Branscome harm and used Southern for that purpose.
Gallimore, however, contends that Bailey is inapposite. She notes that the policeman was Bailey’s innocent agent, but that Southern could not have been her innocent agent because he pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter. I do not agree.
We said in Bailey that “one who effects a criminal act through an innocent or unwitting agent is a principal in the first degree.” Id. at 262, 329 S.E.2d at 40 (citing Collins v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 223, 233, 307 S.E.2d 884, 890 (1983)). In Collins, an undercover policewoman collected prostitution fees for the defendant. In convicting the defendant of pandering, we held that the officer had acted as the defendant’s innocent agent. And we pointed out that the same result would have obtained if one of the prostitutes actually had committed the act of prostitution, collected the defendant’s fee, and then reported the matter to the police.* Collins, 226 Va. at 233, 307 S.E.2d at 891.
When Southern left Gallimore’s presence, he did not know that Gallimore had lied about Wanda’s kidnapping. Although Southern later handled the pistol in such a reckless manner as to subject himself to an involuntary manslaughter conviction, he remained Gallimore’s innocent or unwitting agent in doing so. As the majority points out, given Southern’s state of mind, Gallimore should have foreseen that he might injure the person detained. And, as the Court pointed out in another involuntary manslaughter case, even if the victim’s immediate cause of the death was a separate criminally negligent act, this would not relieve the defendant of criminal responsibility if the intervening act was reasonably foreseeable. See Delawder v. Commonwealth, 214 Va. 55, 58, 196 S.E.2d 913, 915 (1973) (driver of vehicle in high-speed race who hit bystander convicted of involuntary manslaughter even though defendant lost control of his vehicle when other racing vehicle hit defendant’s vehicle).
We held in Bailey, relying on Delawder, that Bailey could reasonably have foreseen the fatal consequences of his reckless conduct — the policeman’s killing of the victim in self-defense. Bailey, 229 Va. at 264, 329 S.E.2d at 41. Here, Gallimore could reasonably *451have foreseen that her reckless conduct would cause Southern to injure or kill the victim in a criminally negligent manner, given his agitated state of mind and the availability of his pistol at the scene. In my opinion, the fact that the officer’s act was not criminal and that Southern’s act was criminal is a distinction without a legal difference under the facts in this case.
The plurality and the dissent ignore Bailey by asserting that the innocent or unwitting agent theory was not applied in the decision of the trial court or the Court of Appeals. I disagree.
At the close of the trial, the trial court commented:
That [Gallimore] did, indeed, initiate the events that lead to the death. Uh, I do not think there is any intervening cause, uh, and I do not think that she had to be the one who did the actual act.
(Emphasis added.) The court then asked counsel to submit memoranda citing applicable legal authority. Although both the Commonwealth and defense counsel addressed two theories of liability (i.e. the innocent agent theory and a more general theory that Gallimore’s “gross and culpable” conduct was a “proximate cause or concurring cause” of the victim’s death), the court did not specify the theory on which it based its conviction of Gallimore for involuntary manslaughter.
The Court of Appeals used the innocent or unwitting agent theory as the foundation of its opinion by the use of the following language:
Whether a defendant knows of the dangerous risk she or he causes is measured by an “objective awareness test” — whether the defendant knew or “should have known” of the risk her or his conduct created. See Keech v. Commonwealth, 9 Va. App. 272, 281-82, 386 S.E.2d 813, 818 (1989).
“[0]ne who effects a criminal act through an innocent or unwitting agent is a principal in the first degree” and may be guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Bailey v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 258, 262, 329 S.E.2d 37, 40 (1985).
Thus, the issue is whether the trial judge could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Gallimore, in reckless disregard of the rights of Branscome, created a situation that she knew or *452should have known “ma[d]e it not improbable that [serious] injury [would] be occasioned.” Bell, 170 Va. at 612, 195 S.E. at 681.
Gallimore v. Commonwealth, 15 Va. App. 288, 290, 422 S.E.2d 613, 614 (1992).
Further, the dissent overlooks our well-established rule that “where a trial court has decided a case correctly but has assigned the wrong reason, we will assign the correct reason and affirm.” State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. v. Seay, 236 Va. 275, 280 n.3, 373 S.E.2d 910, 913 n.3 (1988). See also Metro Mach. Corp. v. Mizenko, 244 Va. 78, 85, 419 S.E.2d 632, 636 (1992); Robbins v. Grimes, 211 Va. 97, 100, 175 S.E.2d 246, 248 (1970).
Thus, I conclude that the evidence supports the finding of the trial court and the conclusion of the Court of Appeals that Gallimore was guilty of involuntary manslaughter as a principal in the first degree. Therefore, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals on this basis.

 Although the prostitute would not have been guilty of pandering, Clinton v. Commonwealth, 204 Va. 275, 283, 130 S.E.2d 437, 443 (1963), rev'd on other grounds, 377 U.S. 158 (1964), she could have been guilty of the related crime of prostitution.