Court Opinion

ID: 9584017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:43:55.143825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:35.186403
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COMPTON, with whom JUSTICE STEPHENSON
joins, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion and the Chief Justice’s excellent analysis of the issues. I write separately only to make explicit that which is implicit in the opinion, that is, the Court is not endorsing the Court of Appeals’ ruling approving the use of reconstructed opinion evidence of speed in this case, Hubbard v. Commonwealth, 12 Va. App. 250, 403 S.E.2d 708 (1991).
The Court finds it unnecessary to reach the merits of the defendant’s argument on the subject, and properly expresses no opinion on the admissibility of the disputéd evidence. If it were necessary to decide the issue, however, I would rule that the trial court erred in admitting the evidence and that the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the trial court’s action.
The evidence on the subject offered by the prosecution violated the settled rule in this Commonwealth that the results of experiments are not admissible in evidence unless the tests were made under conditions which were the same or substantially similar in essential particulars to those existing at the time of the accident. Swiney v. Overby, 237 Va. 231, 233, 377 S.E.2d 372, 374 (1989); Mary Washington Hosp. v. Gibson, 228 Va. 95, 99, 319 S.E.2d 741, 743 (1984). The conditions under which the experimental tests in this case were conducted differed in essential particulars from those existing at the time of this unfortunate occurrence.
I have this additional observation. Under the doctrine of stare decisis, we are bound to invoke the waiver rule of Saunders v. *17Commonwealth, 211 Va. 399, 401, 177 S.E.2d 637, 638 (1970), and we are bound to conclude that defendant waived her objection to the reconstructed opinion evidence of speed. If the Court were writing on a clean slate unencumbered by the Saunders precedent, however, I would not adopt such a rule because of its manifest unfairness to a defendant in a criminal case. The rule forces upon a defendant, who has evidence to offer of the same character as that objected to, the dilemma of either not objecting initially to the inadmissible evidence or, if an objection is overruled, not offering the evidence of the same character. This is a box into which I would not place a defendant in a criminal case.
Moreover, even with the Saunders rule in place, the rule, which is purely one of appellate procedure, may be unconstitutional because it chills the exercise of a defendant’s right guaranteed by the Constitution of Virginia “to call for evidence in his favor.” Va. Const, art. I, § 8. No constitutional issue has been raised in this case, however, so the Court cannot address it.