Patricia Bryant Guthrie v. Commonwealth of Virginia
This text of Patricia Bryant Guthrie v. Commonwealth of Virginia (Patricia Bryant Guthrie v. Commonwealth of Virginia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Willis, Bumgardner and Senior Judge Overton Argued at Richmond, Virginia
PATRICIA BRYANT GUTHRIE MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY v. Record No. 0980-99-2 JUDGE NELSON T. OVERTON MAY 16, 2000 COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF AMELIA COUNTY Thomas V. Warren, Judge
Edwin Gadberry, III (Saunders, Cary & Patterson, on brief), for appellant.
Eugene Murphy, Assistant Attorney General (Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Patricia Bryant Guthrie, appellant, appeals her conviction
for perjury. She argues that the trial court erred in admitting
into evidence a certified copy of birth certificate information
because the document failed to comply with Code § 32.1-272. We
find the trial court did not err in admitting the document into
evidence, and we affirm the conviction.
FACTS
On September 6, 1998, Trooper Joan Beach worked a traffic
stop detail in Amelia County. Trooper Beach stopped a car driven
by appellant's husband. Appellant was a passenger in the car, and
* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, recodifying Code § 17-116.010, this opinion is not designated for publication. a small child was in the rear seat. Trooper Beach asked the age
of the child because the child was not in a car seat. Either
appellant or her husband replied that the child was three and
one-half years old. Trooper Beach informed the couple that a
child under the age of four was required by law to be seated in a
car seat, and she issued a summons to appellant's husband. See
Code § 46.2-1095.
On October 21, 1998, the case was heard in general district
court. Appellant's husband did not appear in court, but appellant
testified twice under oath that the child's birth date was August
23, 1994, making the child four years old at the time of the stop.
Trooper Beach went to the Division of Vital Statistics and
obtained a certified copy of birth certificate information of the
child. This document indicated that the child's birth date was
August 23, 1995, making the child three years old at the time of
the traffic stop. Appellant was subsequently charged with
perjury.
At appellant's perjury trial, the Commonwealth offered into
evidence the certified copy of the child's birth certificate
information. Appellant objected to the admission of the document,
arguing that the document fails to comply with Code § 32.1-272
because it does not show a "date of registration" for the
document. The trial court admitted the document into evidence and
found appellant guilty of perjury.
- 2 - ANALYSIS
Code § 32.1-272(A) provides in pertinent part:
In accordance with § 32.1-271 and the regulations adopted pursuant thereto, the State Registrar . . . shall, upon receipt of a written request, issue a certified copy of any vital record in the custody of the State Registrar or of a part thereof. Such vital records in the State Registrar's custody may be in the form of originals, photoprocessed reproductions or data filed by electronic means. Each copy issued shall show the date of registration.
Code § 32.1-272(B) provides that a certified copy of a vital
record, when issued in accordance with subsection A, "shall be
prima facie evidence of the facts therein stated."
The document in question is entitled "Certification of
Vital Record." The document is signed by the State Registrar
and contains the following certification: "This is to certify
that this is a true and correct reproduction or abstract of the
official record filed with the Virginia Department of Health,
Richmond, Virginia." The document also contains a state file
number, the name of the registrant, the date of birth, the place
of birth, the names and ages of the parents and their places of
birth, the date the record was filed, and the date the document
was issued. The document is printed on security paper, and it
contains an impressed seal of the Division of Vital Statistics.
Appellant argues that the document does not comply with the
statutory requirement that the certified copy "shall show the
date of registration." The document states: "DATE RECORD
- 3 - FILED: SEPTEMBER, 1995." Appellant contends that this is not a
date because it consists of only a month and year and provides
no day of the month.
"Evidence which tends to cast any light upon the subject of
the inquiry is relevant." Cash v. Commonwealth, 5 Va. App. 506,
510, 364 S.E.2d 769, 771 (1988). "The plain, obvious, and
rational meaning of a statute is always preferred to any
curious, narrow or strained construction." Branch v.
Commonwealth, 14 Va. App. 836, 839, 419 S.E.2d 422, 424 (1992).
In addition, a statute should not "be construed so that it leads
to absurd results." Id.
Although the "DATE RECORD FILED" portion of the document
contains only a month and a year, we find that this does not
render the document inadmissible pursuant to Code § 32.1-272.
Code § 32.1-272(A) does not specify that "the date of
registration" shall include a day of the month. It says only
that a copy shall "show the date of registration." In addition,
the regulations governing the preparation of certified copies of
vital records by the State Registrar do not define or even
address the "date of registration" requirement. See 12 VAC
5-550-510. Therefore, nothing in the statute or regulations
indicates that a month and year does not constitute a date of
registration.
Black's Law Dictionary defines date as "(1)[t]he day when
an event happened or will happen . . . (2) [a] period of time in
- 4 - general . . . ." Black's Law Dictionary 400 (7th ed. 1999).
Webster's dictionary defines date as "a statement or formula
affixed . . . that specifies the time (as day, month, and year)
and often the place of execution or making . . . ." Webster's
Third New International Dictionary 576 (1981). Although the
primary definitions of date indicate that the term includes a
specific day of a month, the secondary definition is more vague
and indicates a general period of time as opposed to a precise
day. Limiting the definition of date to an exact day of the
month would be a "narrow or strained" construction of Code
§ 32.1-272(A) leading to a potentially absurd result. See
Branch, 14 Va. App. at 839, 419 S.E.2d at 424.
Moreover, Code § 32.1-272 does not address the
admissibility of a certified copy of a vital record into
evidence. Code § 32.1-272(B) merely provides that a certified
copy of a vital record "shall be prima facie evidence of the
facts therein stated" when it is issued in accordance with the
requirements of Code § 32.1-272(A). Therefore, any failure to
comply with Code § 32.1-272(A) would address the weight to be
given the evidence, not its admissibility. The test
establishing relevance is not whether the proposed evidence
conclusively proves a fact, but whether it has any tendency to
establish a fact at issue. See Johnson v. Commonwealth, 2 Va.
App. 598, 601, 347 S.E.2d 163, 165 (1986). The document in
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