Court Opinion

ID: 9588276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:32:16.753399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:59:19.073673
License: Public Domain

*728KELSEY, J.,
dissenting.
The majority’s discourse on due process cuts a broad path through the bedeviling principles of contempt law. Problem is, none of it is properly before us.
On appeal, the defendants—two lawyers and a then-third-year law student—concede they did not raise any specific due process objections prior to filing their notices of appeal. Nor did they at any time file a motion to reconsider, to vacate, to set aside, or any other motion specifically asking the trial court to reverse its decision. What they filed was a motion to stay the jail sentence pending appeal. See Code § 19.2-319. No Virginia appellate court has ever held, until now, that a motion to stay a jail sentence pending appeal preserves issues never once raised either prior to the conviction or in a motion to set aside after the conviction.
To be sure, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected just this sort of reasoning in Nusbaum v. Berlin, 273 Va. 385, 641 S.E.2d 494 (2007). In that case, a lawyer was held in direct, summary contempt and complained on appeal that he was entitled to the due process protections available for indirect, plenary contempt. Prior to the entry of final judgment, the lawyer stated “specific objections” to the summary proceeding (very similar to the ones asserted here) asserting that the trial court “violated his due process rights.” Id. at 404, 641 S.E.2d at 504. The lawyer advised the trial court that he wanted to make it aware of his specific objections and, by doing so, “make sure” he “preserved any right of appeal” of the contempt finding. Id. He did not, however, ask the trial court to “reconsider and set aside the finding of contempt of court for those reasons.” Id. (emphasis added). After hearing the lawyer’s specific objections to the contempt finding, the trial court entered a final order confirming its previous bench ruling finding the lawyer in contempt.
On appeal, the lawyer argued that, “having made the circuit court aware of his objections, he had no obligation to ask the court to reconsider any matter since the court had the opportunity, within 21 days of entering the final order, to vacate *729that order and change its rulings.” Id. at 402, 641 S.E.2d at 503. The Virginia Supreme Court flatly disagreed. The lawyer could not complain on appeal that the trial court erred in not vacating its contempt finding on due process grounds, Nusbaum held, because the lawyer never once asked the court to do so. “Those issues, whether the circuit court violated his due process rights by summarily convicting him of indirect criminal contempt, with no notice of the charge, no plenary criminal hearing, and no substitution of the Commonwealth as the prosecuting party, are therefore waived on appeal.” Id. at 406, 641 S.E.2d at 505 (citing Rule 5:25).
In our case, the defendants made even less of an effort to preserve the due process issues than the lawyer did in Nusbaum. Here, the defendants raised their due process arguments only in support of their motion for a stay of the jail sentence pending appeal. At no point did they ever ask the trial court, either orally or in writing, to set aside its contempt findings based upon these objections. As in Nusbaum, the trial court did not vacate its contempt findings based upon the after-the-fact due process objections because, quite simply, it was not asked to do so.
The majority’s contrary view imposes upon a trial court the sua sponte obligation to vacate a conviction on grounds raised for the first and only time during a motion for stay pending appeal when the party standing to benefit from the vacature, the defendant, conspicuously chooses not to seek that relief. That the defendant does not ask the trial court to vacate the conviction does not matter—the court should grant it anyway. I find this conclusion hard to understand and harder still to defend.
Equally unconvincing is the effort at distinguishing Nusbaum. “Most importantly,” the majority reasons, the trial court in our case “had, in fact, read ” the defendant’s due process arguments and thus was “well aware” of the specific objections being asserted. Ante, at 706, 660 S.E.2d at 331 (emphasis in original). That is “key” in distinguishing our case from Nusbaum, the majority emphasizes. Ante, at 709, *730660 S.E.2d at 332. In Nusbaum, however, the lawyer specifically advised the trial court in open court of each of his due process objections. It could have just as easily been said in Nusbaum that the trial court had, in fact, heard the due process arguments and thus was well aware of the lawyer’s due process arguments. What the majority sees as the “most” important and “key” difference between our case and Nusbaum is, to me, no difference at all. See Ante, at 706, 709, 660 S.E.2d at 331, 332.
In short, if procedural default applies to the lawyer in Nusbaum, it applies all the more to the defendants in our case. The majority’s holding to the contrary is as unpersuasive as it is unprecedented.
I respectfully dissent.