Court Opinion

ID: 9897732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-14 19:24:23.627275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:42.499768
License: Public Domain

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA

              Present: Judges Humphreys, White and Retired Judge Frank
UNPUBLISHED

              DANIEL ANDERSON DAVIS
                                                                              MEMORANDUM OPINION
              v.     Record No. 1952-22-3                                          PER CURIAM
                                                                                 OCTOBER 17, 2023
              COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

                                    FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF HENRY COUNTY
                                                G. Carter Greer, Judge

                             (Heath L. Sabin; Sabin Law Office, PC, on brief), for appellant.
                             Appellant submitting on brief.

                             (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General; David A. Stock, Assistant
                             Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

                     Upon guilty pleas, the trial court convicted Daniel Anderson Davis for six counts of

              distributing methamphetamine, three counts of failing to appear in court, and one count of

              obstructing justice. The trial court sentenced Davis to a total of 185 years and 36 months of

              incarceration with 173 years and 36 months suspended. Davis contends that the trial court erred in

              refusing to exclude text messages at the sentencing hearing because the Commonwealth did not

              authenticate them and lay a proper foundation for their admission. He also argues that the trial court

              abused its discretion in imposing an active sentence of 12 years. After examining the briefs and the

              record in this case, the panel unanimously holds that oral argument is unnecessary because “the

              appeal is wholly without merit.” Code § 17.1-403(ii)(a); Rule 5A:27(a). We affirm the judgment.

                      Retired Judge Frank took part in the consideration of this case by designation pursuant

              to Code § 17.1-400(D).

                      This opinion is not designated for publication.   See Code § 17.1-413(A).
                                          BACKGROUND

        On six occasions in 2021, Davis sold quantities of methamphetamine to a confidential

informant working for the Henry County police. The amount of methamphetamine Davis sold the

informant ranged from more than 28 grams to more than 84 grams. In the six transactions, the

informant paid Davis more than $5,000.

        After entering his guilty pleas but before sentencing, Davis filed a motion in limine to

exclude a series of text messages from evidence at the sentencing hearing. At the sentencing

hearing, the Commonwealth asked the trial court to consider limited text messages showing that

Davis had engaged in efforts to intimidate the confidential informant in the case, that Davis’s illegal

drug business had been lucrative, and that he was unremorseful for his crimes. Davis contended

that the Commonwealth had failed to “lay the necessary foundation” for admission of the messages.

The trial court noted that the rules of evidence were permissive, rather than mandatory, at a

sentencing hearing, and denied the motion in limine.

        Investigator Darrell Foley testified at sentencing that while Davis was out on bond for the

methamphetamine distribution charges, Davis was charged with drug trafficking in Rockingham

County, North Carolina. While he was in jail in North Carolina, the car of the confidential

informant who had purchased methamphetamine from Davis in Henry County was vandalized.

Based upon this incident, Davis was charged with obstructing justice. In addition, Christina

Robinson, who was in a relationship with Davis, filed a criminal complaint resulting in the

informant’s arrest. The charge against the informant later was dismissed when Robinson failed to

appear in court.

        Investigator Foley identified the people with whom Davis exchanged text messages while in

jail as Davis’s friends or associates. Investigator Foley read for the trial court text messages

involving those friends or associates. One message stated that the writer was not ready to ask God

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for “forgiveness yet” because he was not “done sinning.” In other messages, the writer commented

that his drug business was lucrative. By text, Davis instructed others to look up the confidential

informant on Facebook and to send him pictures of her house and the cars parked near it.

Investigator Foley indicated that Henry County Jail inmates were permitted to use an iPad to send

text messages using an individual password assigned by the facility.

        Davis testified that he was diagnosed and treated for mental illness while in a facility before

he was 18 years old. He later developed issues with substance abuse after reuniting with his

biological mother in Martinsville. Davis said that he lost his job after contracting COVID-19 and

missing too many days from work. After that, he became depressed and abused drugs. Through

questioning from defense counsel, Davis explained the circumstances and context of the text

messages that the Commonwealth had introduced. In doing so, Davis admitted that he was the

person who sent or received the messages, except for one message for which he claimed to have

allowed another inmate to use Davis’s password to text Davis’s own girlfriend. The author of that

message said he was facing a 30-year sentence and had made at least $200,000 in a few months

selling “cream,” or methamphetamine.

        The trial court found, as the Commonwealth conceded, that Davis was not subject to the

mandatory minimum punishment for his six convictions of distributing methamphetamine under

Code § 18.2-248(C)(4) because he satisfied the conditions of Code § 18.2-248(C)(4)(e) by

providing useful information to the Commonwealth. The trial court acknowledged Davis’s difficult

childhood and upbringing, which involved the foster care system and termination of his biological

mother’s parental rights. The trial court stated that it disbelieved Davis’s claim about the text

message sent to his girlfriend by another inmate, as the message contained specific information

pertaining to the six drug charges Davis faced. The trial court found that the text messages showed

that Davis was unremorseful and that he was in the methamphetamine distribution business to make

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a lot of money. The trial court sentenced Davis to suspended sentences of 30 years of imprisonment

on 5 convictions for distributing methamphetamine, 12 months on 3 counts of failing to appear, and

5 years for obstructing justice. For the sixth conviction for drug distribution, the trial court

sentenced Davis to 30 years of imprisonment with 18 years suspended. This appeal followed.

                                              ANALYSIS

                                                    I.

        Davis argues that the trial court erred in denying his motion in limine to exclude the text

messages at the sentencing hearing. He contends that the Commonwealth failed to authenticate

the text messages properly.1 We disagree.

        Under Virginia Rule of Evidence 2:1101(c)(1), “adherence to the Rules of Evidence . . .

is permissive, not mandatory” in “[c]riminal proceedings other than (i) trial, (ii) preliminary

hearings, and (iii) sentencing proceedings before a jury.” As this Court has stated, “[a]

sentencing hearing before a judge is not a criminal trial. When exercising the wide discretion

inherent in sentencing, a judge should ‘not be denied an opportunity to obtain pertinent

information by a requirement of rigid adherence to restrictive rules of evidence properly

applicable to the trial.’” Smith v. Commonwealth, 52 Va. App. 26, 30 (2008) (quoting Williams

v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 247 (1949)) (finding that the hearsay rule “does not apply to

        1
          We do not consider the portion of Davis’s argument asserting that a “disconnect” exists
between Virginia cases permitting a trial court to consider evidence at sentencing that does not
conform to rules of evidence and Virginia statutes governing evidence admissible in a sentencing
hearing by a jury. Although Davis arguably raised this issue in his written motion, he obtained
no ruling upon it from the trial court at the sentencing hearing. “No ruling of the trial court . . .
will be considered as a basis for reversal unless an objection was stated with reasonable certainty
at the time of the ruling, except for good cause shown or to enable this Court to attain the ends of
justice.” Rule 5A:18. Under Rule 5A:18, it is an appellant’s burden “to obtain a ruling from the
[trial] court” on the issue for which he seeks appellate review. Fisher v. Commonwealth, 16
Va. App. 447, 454 (1993). Because Davis failed to obtain a ruling from the trial court upon the
issue he now raises, “there is no ruling for us to review on appeal.” Ohree v. Commonwealth, 26
Va. App. 299, 308 (1998). For this reason, we do not consider this aspect of Davis’s argument
on appeal.
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sentencing hearings”). However, “[t]his broad rule of inclusion is tempered by the requirement

that the information bear some indicia of reliability.” Moses v. Commonwealth, 27 Va. App.

293, 302 (1998).

        Thus, the trial court was not required to apply the rules of evidence in determining

whether to consider the text messages at the sentencing hearing. Nonetheless, we conclude that

the circumstances and context supplied indicia of reliability for the text messages. The

exchanges occurred between an inmate using Davis’s assigned password at the Henry County

Jail and known friends and associates of Davis. The messages indicated that the writer’s drug

business had been lucrative, as Davis’s distributions of drugs to the informant certainly had been.

Moreover, in attempting to explain their meaning, Davis admitted writing all of the text

messages in question except one. And the trial court did not believe Davis’s disclaimer of the

message saying that he had sold more than $200,000 worth of methamphetamine because the

text included information specific to Davis’s situation—that he then faced a mandatory minimum

of 30 years for the 6 drug charges. Considering these facts and circumstances, there were

sufficient indicia of reliability for the trial court to consider the text messages at sentencing and

we do not disturb the trial court’s denial of the motion in limine.

                                                   II.

        Davis contends that the trial court abused its discretion in imposing an active sentence of

12 years. He maintains that the trial court improperly considered the text message that he denied

writing and concluded that Davis was unremorseful for his involvement in drug trafficking.

        “Criminal sentencing decisions . . . are vested in the sound discretion of trial judges, not

appellate judges.” Minh Duy Du v. Commonwealth, 292 Va. 555, 563 (2016). “When exercising

its discretionary power . . . , the trial court ‘has a range of choice, and its decision will not be

disturbed as long as it stays within that range and is not influenced by any mistake of law.’” Id.

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at 563-64 (quoting Lawlor v. Commonwealth, 285 Va. 187, 212-13 (2013)). “Given this

deferential standard of review, we will not interfere with the sentence so long as it was within the

range set by the legislature for the particular crime of which the defendant was convicted.” Fazili v.

Commonwealth, 71 Va. App. 239, 248 (2019) (quoting Scott v. Commonwealth, 58 Va. App. 35, 46

(2011)).

        The task of sentencing “rest[s] heavily on judges closest to the facts of the case—those

hearing and seeing the witnesses, taking into account their verbal and nonverbal communication,

and placing all of it in the context of the entire case.” Minh Duy Du, 292 Va. at 563. In this case,

the record demonstrates that the trial court considered the facts of the case, Davis’s personal

circumstances, and other relevant information when fashioning Davis’s sentences. The sentences

that the trial court imposed for Davis’s convictions were within the ranges set by the legislature.

See Code §§ 18.2-10, 18.2-248, 18.2-460 and 19.2-128. “[O]nce it is determined that a sentence is

within the limitations set forth in the statute under which it is imposed, appellate review is at an

end.” Thomason v. Commonwealth, 69 Va. App. 89, 99 (2018) (quoting Minh Duy Du, 292 Va. at

565). Here, Davis’s sentences were within the statutory ranges, so “our task is complete.” Id.

                                            CONCLUSION

        For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

                                                                                               Affirmed.

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