Fairfax County Traffic Court

For a lot of our clients, a charge of Reckless Driving can result in the loss of their job, their security clearance, etc.

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Sawyer v. Commonwealth

Facts:

Defendant, a previously adjudicated habitual offender in a Fairfax county traffic court, was arrested after a police chase during which he operated a motorcycle at a high rate of speed, in gross violation of posted limits, approached a group of children as they crossed the roadway, prompting several to run and, moments thereafter, lost control, crashed into a fence and fled. At an earlier trial, defendant was convicted of attempting to elude police but a reckless driving charge was dismissed. Although reckless driving was a necessary element to the felonious habitual offender charge, the court held that the commonwealth was not collaterally estopped from bringing the charge because the record did not reveal the reason for the earlier dismissal of the reckless driving charge. Because defendant failed to challenge the indictment in the trial court and the court found no justification to invoke the ends of justice exception, the court declined to address defendant's complaint on that issue. The court found the evidence sufficient to support the finding that defendant's driving endangered life, limb, or property of others in violation of Va. Code Ann. § 46.2-357(B)(2) and affirmed the conviction.

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Holdings:

The Virginia Court made the following holding:

· When the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged on appeal, the court views the record in the light most favorable to the commonwealth, granting it all reasonable inferences fairly deducible therefrom, and the decision will not be disturbed unless plainly wrong or without evidence to support it. The doctrine of collateral estoppel arises from the protection from double jeopardy in U.S. Const. amend. V and instructs that when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit. However, the doctrine does not apply if it appears that the prior judgment could have been grounded upon an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration. The party seeking the protection of collateral estoppel carries the burden of showing that the verdict in the prior action necessarily decided the precise issue he now seeks to preclude. An acquittal, standing alone, does not permit a conclusion with respect to a court's findings or rationale.

Fairfax County Traffic Court

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