If any person lawfully imprisoned in jail and not tried or sentenced on a criminal offense escapes from jail by force or violence, other than by setting fire thereto, or if any person lawfully in the custody of any law-enforcement officer, as defined in § 18.2-57, on a charge of criminal offense escapes from such custody by force or violence, he is guilty of a Class 6 felony.
Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-478
Escape from jail or custody by force or violence without setting fire to jail; penalty
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Fender v. Thompson (1989)
Most recently applied in Morva v. Zook (May 2016)
Code 1950, § 18.1-289; 1960, c. 358; 1975, cc. 14, 15; 1985, c. 555; 2025, cc. 38, 41.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.