Broadcasts.com - "April 2019 - Commonwealth v. Watson" (Oral Arguments of the Supreme Court of Virginia)

Published: May 19, 2019, 3:43 a.m.

This podcast is provided by Ben Glass and Steve Emmert

Granted Appeal Summary:

From the Circuit Court of Rockingham County

Granted Appeal Summary:

Assignments of Error

The Circuit Court erred by not dismissing Watson’s motion to vacate his sentences because the motion to vacate was filed more than twenty-one days after the entry of final judgment and the alleged defect (a sentence below the mandatory minimum) only renders a judgment voidable, and not void.

The Circuit Court erred by failing to adhere to the rule of stare decisis and by declining to apply the ruling this Court established in 1953 that imposing a sentence below a mandatory minimum does not render a sentence void, but merely voidable. Smith v. Commonwealth, 195 Va. 297, 300, 77 S.E. 2d 860, 862 (1953); see also Royster v. Smith, 195 Va. 228, 234, 77 S.E.2d 855, 858 (1953).

The Circuit Court erred by finding this Court had overruled Smith v. Commonwealth and Royster v. Smith, precedent from 1953, by broadly reading this Court’s more recent cases beyond the limits of the assignments of error in those cases and concluding that this Court had overruled the rule from the 1953 cases (that imposing a sentence below a mandatory minimum does not render a sentence void, but merely voidable), despite precedent from this Court that precludes lower courts from assuming a case has been implicitly overruled and related precedent from this Court restricting how lower courts should interpret precedent.

The Circuit Court erred by failing to recognize the significance of the General Assembly codifying this Court’s holding that a sentence below the statutory minimum renders a judgment merely voidable, not void, when it amended the Code to allow the Commonwealth to appeal such a judgment and making such an appeal subject to the contemporaneous objection rule, where such an amendment would not have been necessary if a judgment imposing a sentence below a mandatory minimum is void ab initio, not voidable.

The Circuit Court erred by failing to distinguish the holding of the Court from mere obiter dicta in an opinion.

The Circuit Court erred in failing to apply the rule established in the 1953 cases, which have not been overruled, because a circuit court “is not at liberty to ignore” the precedent of this Court that has direct application in a case in favor of later opinions of this Court that “employ[] a similar analysis in a different factual and legal context,” and instead the circuit court should have followed the 1953 cases that directly control and leave to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.