Silfredo Ant Castillo Canales v. Commonwealth of Virginia

CourtCourt of Appeals of Virginia
DecidedSeptember 5, 2023
Docket1037224
StatusPublished

This text of Silfredo Ant Castillo Canales v. Commonwealth of Virginia (Silfredo Ant Castillo Canales 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.

Bluebook
Silfredo Ant Castillo Canales v. Commonwealth of Virginia, (Va. Ct. App. 2023).

Opinion

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA PUBLISHED

Present: Judges Athey, Ortiz and Senior Judge Clements Argued at Leesburg, Virginia

SILFREDO CASTILLO CANALES

v. Record No. 0775-22-4

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA OPINION BY JUDGE JEAN HARRISON CLEMENTS SILFREDO ANT CASTILLO CANALES SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

v. Record No. 1037-22-4

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ARLINGTON COUNTY Louise M. DiMatteo, Judge

Kevin M. Tamul, Assistant Public Defender (Helen Randolph, Assistant Public Defender, on briefs), for appellant.

Francis A. Frio, Senior Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General; Leanna C. Minix, Assistant Attorney General, on briefs), for appellee.

In these two appeals, consolidated for purposes of oral argument, Silfredo Castillo Canales

contends that the trial court erred in refusing to hold a single revocation hearing upon a major

violation report that alleged numerous technical violations of his probation. He further maintains

that the procedure the trial court employed—holding multiple successive revocation hearings, each

upon a single instance of an alleged technical violation—violated the separation of powers doctrine

as well as the letter and spirit of recently enacted Code § 19.2-306.1. In addition, Canales argues

that the trial court erred in finding that he committed multiple technical violations when all the

violations were part of a single course of conduct. He also asserts that the trial court erred in

holding that Code § 19.2-306.1 “is not retroactive because the law is procedural and remedial[.]” Finally, Canales contends that the “trial court erred by acting ultra vires by failing to follow a law

[it] believed ‘ham[strung] the [c]ourt.’”

For the reasons that follow, we affirm the trial court’s judgment in Record No. 0775-22-4,

involving findings that Canales violated his probation following the revocation hearings held on

March 11, 2022. We also affirm, in Record No. 1037-22-4, the trial court’s judgment that Canales

violated his probation in the revocation cases held on May 13, 2022. However, we reverse the

sentences that the trial court imposed and remand the sentencing decisions to the trial court for

re-sentencing.

BACKGROUND

Upon guilty pleas, the trial court convicted Canales of grand larceny and statutory

burglary and, on October 27, 2017, sentenced Canales to five years’ imprisonment on each

conviction (to run concurrently) with two years and six months suspended. The trial court also

imposed a three-year term of supervised probation following his release from confinement.

Following his release from incarceration, on October 29, 2021, a major violation report

(MVR) was filed in the trial court alleging that Canales had violated Condition 6 of his

supervised probation—requiring him to follow his probation officer’s instructions and to report

as instructed—for repeatedly failing to report for drug testing and office appointments. The

alleged violations of Condition 6 occurred on June 2, August 3, August 19, September 17,

September 23, September 30, October 5, and October 7, 2021. The MVR also alleged that

Canales violated Condition 8 of his probation—requiring him to refrain from unlawful use of

drugs—by testing positive for cocaine on May 25 and October 12, 2021. The MVR also asserted

that Canales violated his probation by failing to pay court-ordered restitution and by failing to

complete a substance abuse evaluation and treatment as directed by his probation officer.

-2- Based on the MVR, the trial court issued a capias for Canales’s arrest on November 16,

2021, for violating four conditions of his probation. The capias was served on Canales on

January 23, 2022. The probation officer filed an addendum to the MVR on January 24, 2022,

indicating that Canales had absconded from supervision.1 The addendum also indicated that

Canales had a hearing scheduled for January 25, 2022, in Arlington County General District

Court upon a new charge of breaking and entering.

At an initial status hearing on January 28, 2022, Canales contended that the trial court

should consider the allegations in the MVR “as a whole” and as “one violation.” The trial court

disagreed, noting that the MVR was “chockablock full of discrete incidents” involving Canales’s

drug use and failures to report as instructed. Upon concluding that the alleged probation

violations did not comprise “a single course of conduct” under Code § 19.2-306.1(A), the trial

court decided to hold a separate revocation hearing upon each reported violation event alleged in

the MVR.2 The trial court assigned each date of an alleged violation a circuit court number

relating to Canales’s probation for grand larceny and for statutory burglary. The trial court

scheduled the matters for successive hearings on March 11 and March 25, 2022.

1 Subsequently, it was discovered Canales was in custody in Arlington County during the time that the probation officer was unable to locate him. The trial court later dismissed alleged probation violations for absconding from supervision during that time. 2 The trial court’s order stated:

IT APPEARING TO THE COURT that the MVR contains a history of violations stemming from different incident dates and separate and discrete violation events—that is arising out of different circumstances and it is the Court’s view that each such date or separate and discrete violation should be separated for purposes of consideration by the Court and the Court shall assign such separate and discrete violations a different case number . . . .

-3- During revocation proceedings held on March 11, 2022, the Commonwealth agreed with

Canales’s contention that the trial court should hold one revocation hearing on all the alleged

violations in the MVR. Nonetheless, the trial court held successive revocation hearings3 and,

upon Canales’s admission of each separate violation incident, the trial court found him in

violation of Condition 8 of his probation for both grand larceny and statutory burglary based

upon his positive drug tests on May 25 and October 12, 2021. The trial court found Canales in

violation of Condition 6 of his probation for failing to report for drug testing on June 2 and

August 3, 2021. The trial court entered eight separate orders—two for each date of violation and

corresponding either to Canales’s probation for grand larceny or for statutory burglary—finding

Canales in violation of his probation, revoking his suspended sentences for grand larceny or

statutory burglary, and resuspending them in their entirety. The trial court postponed the

remaining alleged violations for hearings on a later date because Canales then was experiencing

pain from a dental procedure.

Canales appeared in the trial court for further revocation hearings based upon the same

MVR on May 13, 2022. At the successive revocation hearings that followed, Canales disputed

the violations.4 Canales asserted that under Code § 19.2-306.1 holding only one revocation

hearing was the appropriate procedure; the Commonwealth agreed and further maintained that

the trial court should not impose any active sentence in the matter. The trial court rejected the

parties’ contentions and found Canales in violation of his probation for both grand larceny and

statutory burglary based upon his failure to appear for drug testing on August 19 and September

23, 2021, and for failing to appear for a scheduled appointment with the probation officer on

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Silfredo Ant Castillo Canales v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/silfredo-ant-castillo-canales-v-commonwealth-of-virginia-vactapp-2023.