Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

when the trial has ended and attorne's are doing their closing arguments, defense attorney jumps up and asks for dismissal on hit and run felony charge. there was never any evidence of 1000,00 dollar damage. one witness claime went to the hospital but wasn't hurt. the owner of the car was not their and no testimony to anything( make model year mileage etc.) also the driver was not there. the prosecutor dtried to ammit the hosp. records of inury of the defendent to substantuate costs.but was denied by defending attorney and the judge. too late -no more eveidence can be admitted. there was another charge of reckless involved, and the defendants attorney asked for that to be dismissed because of no drivr in court and only a passenger who did not see anything-not even lights. and no one saw or had proof of the defendant being the driver. the court was put to another date to give the verdicts. the defending atorney said things were really good and not to worry. the question is basically can evidence of damages be brought in now,and how effective is this request for dismissal of hit and run felony without any financial proof? the prosecutor did not meet his proof of the charges required on a felony hit and run. having 2 seperate charges in one case does become confusing. and could the judge just need time to decide on the reckless charge?


Asked on 3/07/10, 6:13 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jonathon Moseley Moseley & Associates Law Firm

It is not clear which side you are on, and what you are hoping for - a conviction or not guilty.

I am sorry if it is not what you want.

Generally, he sounds like an excellent defense attorney. Get his business card and save it for if you ever get in trouble. I would be interestd to know who it is. Maybe you could email me privately.

If I have to guess from this short description, I would say that the defendant will be found NOT guilty on the hit and run charge, and probably on the reckless driving charge (but that is not so clear from your short description).

A criminal conviction is a very, very serious thing and in our system we don't want this to happen lightly. We require the prosecutor to follow the rules precisely. We don't want it to be easy to get a criminal conviction.

This is especially true in traffic cases, because accidents DO happen all the time. When should it be made so serious that it is a criminal issue, not just a civil lawsuit for damages?

Therefore, the prosecutors are supposed to KNOW exactly what they have to prove. It is not a mystery. They should have a checklist. They do the same kinds of cases over and over and over. It might seem unfair to some people. But the prosecutors should be more organized. They can do that easily.

However, there MIGHT be enough evidence in the case for the judge to find an INFERENCE that the damage was more than $1000. He might say that the evidence did not explicitly put a number on it, but that there was sufficent evidence to INFER that the damage was greater than $1,000. That is the evidence might show that it was far greater than $1,000 even if an exact number was not identified. Unlikely, but possible.

About the reckless, I am not sure why no driver in court would necessarily be used to dismiss that charge. Again, the question would be whether there was enough OTHER evidence or other witnesses to prove reckless driving. While it is a good question, I think there is a large chance that there could be OTHER evidence showing that the driver was reckless. Of course, the prosecutor must prove that the defendant was actually driving.

Don't forget of course that any injured party canalso sue in a civil lawsuit for money.

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Answered on 3/19/10, 8:30 pm


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