Wright v. Commonwealth

Decided December 3, 1982

Supreme Court of Virginia · decided 1982-12-03

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“we review the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, granting to it all reasonable inferences fairly deducible therefrom.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 15 Va. App. 518 - Welch v. Commonwealth

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1982-12-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently July 2019 · most notably Hechler Chevrolet, Inc. v. General Motors Corp. (1985), 4 Va. App. 248 - Bright v. Commonwealth (1987)

81 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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COMPTON, J.,

¶1dissenting.

¶2In my opinion, the evidence is insufficient to sustain these convictions. Even viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prosecutor’s evidence only creates a suspicion that there was an agreement between Wright and Lightfoot. Moreover, only by indulging in pure speculation can one conclude that the intent of any such agreement was to commit a robbery, or even to commit a felony. In Virginia, a person cannot conspire to commit a misdemeanor. Code § 18.2-22. Finally, the evidence is insufficient to establish the target of the alleged robbery. This is demonstrated by the trial court’s statement:

“They were out there for the purpose of robbing something. It might not have been McDonald’s. It could have been Pizza Hut across [Route] 60 ... ”

¶3Consequently, I would reverse the convictions and dismiss the indictments.