Edgar Roland Barfield v. Commonwealth of Virginia

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Benton, Agee and Senior Judge Hodges
Argued at Chesapeake, Virginia
EDGAR ROLAND BARFIELD
MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY
v. Record No. 1050-00-1 JUDGE JAMES W. BENTON, JR.
FEBRUARY 20, 2001
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH
A. Bonwill Shockley, Judge
Shawn R. Salyer (Louis W. Kershner &
Associates, P.C., on brief), for appellant.
Leah A. Darron, Assistant Attorney General
(Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief),
for appellee.
The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether the
evidence was sufficient for the trial judge to convict Edgar
Barfield of abduction in violation of Code § 18.2-47. We affirm
the conviction.
I.
"Where the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged after
conviction, it is our duty to consider it in the light most
favorable to the Commonwealth and give it all reasonable
inferences fairly deducible therefrom." Higginbotham v.
Commonwealth, 216 Va. 349, 352, 218 S.E.2d 534, 537 (1975). So
* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opinion is not
designated for publication.
viewed the Commonwealth's evidence proved that a boy, who was
eight years old, was fighting Barfield's son, who was six years
old, when Barfield arrived. After Barfield got out of his car to
make an inquiry, the boy ran. Barfield chased and caught the boy
and loudly asked why he had taken Barfield's son's knives. When
the boy denied taking the knives, Barfield said he intended to
take the boy home to his parents. The boy said "No" and held onto
a fence to resist being taken. Barfield then grabbed the boy by
the waist and forcefully pulled him from the fence. He then
carried the boy to his car.
At the car, the boy freed himself and moved to the middle of
the street. Barfield again grabbed the boy and held him to the
ground. One witness testified that Barfield "held [the boy] on
the ground" such that the boy "was on his belly, and . . .
Barfield took both of his hands and set them on the [boy's] back
and just held them there." Barfield held the boy in this manner
"for about a minute." Another witness "saw a child being hurt and
being held down by an adult." She testified that Barfield was
holding the boy who had moved into a fetal position. A witness
testified that Barfield told his son to kick the boy's head and
held the boy while his son kicked him. Barfield then released the
boy, ran to his vehicle, and drove away.
Barfield later told the police that when he arrived from
work, his son was crying and complaining that the boy, who was the
son's friend, had stolen knives from their house. Barfield said
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he tried to take the boy home to his parents but the boy refused
to go. Barfield then related the following events:
I had him by one arm; and I said [to my
son], slap him. He was getting on a
bicycle, and [my son] pushed him off. I
said, If you were my boy, I would whip your
ass. [My son] might have kicked him. I
continued to talk to him for a little bit,
and then . . . [my son] may have slapped
him, and he fell to the ground, and he may
have kicked him. I never held him down. I
just had him by one arm and that was just to
keep him from kicking and stabbing me with a
fork. . . . There was a thirteen-year-old
boy. He may have kicked him upside down and
shook him.
At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial judge
convicted Barfield of abduction. This appeal followed.
II.
In pertinent part, Code § 18.2-47 provides as follows:
Any person, who, by force, intimidation or
deception, and without legal justification
or excuse, seizes, takes, transports,
detains or secretes the person of another,
with the intent to deprive such other person
of his personal liberty . . . shall be
deemed guilty of "abduction" . . . .
Citing Brown v. Commonwealth, 230 Va. 310, 337 S.E.2d 711(1985), Barfield contends that the evidence was insufficient to
convict him of abduction because the amount of force he used was
incidental to an assault. The holding in Brown is not germane
to the resolution of this appeal. The issue in Brown concerned
whether the conviction for abduction constituted double jeopardy
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where the accused was convicted of both abduction and rape. See
id. at 312-13, 337 S.E.2d at 713. The Court held as follows:
[O]ne accused of abduction by detention and
another crime involving restraint of the
victim, both growing out of a continuing
course of conduct, is subject upon
conviction to separate penalties for
separate offenses only when the detention
committed in the act of abduction is
separate and apart from, and not merely
incidental to, the restraint employed in the
commission of the other crime.
Id. at 314, 337 S.E.2d at 714. Here, however, Barfield was
charged with and convicted of only the offense of abduction. We
only need to determine whether the evidence was sufficient to
prove abduction as defined in Code § 18.2-47.
Construing Code § 18.2-47, the Supreme Court held as
follows:
Code § 18.2-47 supersedes the common law.
We shall construe it according to its plain
meaning and evident intent. Because it
casts its several prohibited acts in the
disjunctive, each is independently
sufficient to support a conviction.
Accordingly, the physical detention of a
person, with the intent to deprive him of
his personal liberty, by force,
intimidation, or deception, without any
asportation of the victim from one place to
another, is sufficient. . . .
We recognize . . . that in rape, robbery,
and assault cases there is usually some
detention, and often a seizure, of the
victim. The constitutional problems which
may be created by such an overlapping of
crimes are, however, not before us for
decision in this case.
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Scott v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 519, 526, 323 S.E.2d 572, 576
(1984).
Several witnesses testified that Barfield restrained the
boy on the ground while his son kicked the boy. One of the
witnesses heard Barfield tell his son to kick the boy and
testified that Barfield's son kicked the boy's head for
approximately a minute while Barfield held the boy. Barfield's
own statement to the police, while denying that he restrained
the boy on the ground, relates that Barfield held the boy and
told his son to slap him. This evidence was sufficient for the
trial judge to find beyond a reasonable doubt both that Barfield
detained the boy and that he did so with the intent to deprive
the boy of his personal liberty while his son, at Barfield's
direction, assaulted the boy.
Barfield argues that Johnson v. Commonwealth, 221 Va. 872,
275 S.E.2d 592 (1981), requires that we reverse his conviction.
In that case, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction for
abduction because an intruder held a woman "in furtherance of
his sexual advances and not with the intent to deprive her of
her personal liberty, although such a deprivation did occur
momentarily." Id. at 879, 275 S.E.2d at 597. The intruder, as
shown by his actions, had no intention of detaining because he
released her when she resisted. In this case, Barfield not only
detained the boy, but he had the requisite intent to make that
detention a crime. He held the boy on the ground while ordering
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his son to kick him. This action satisfies the requirements of
Code § 18.2-47.
Accordingly, we affirm the conviction.
Affirmed.
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