If any person maliciously shoot, stab, cut, or wound any person or by any means cause him bodily injury, with the intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill, he shall, except where it is otherwise provided, be guilty of a Class 3 felony. If such act be done unlawfully but not maliciously, with the intent aforesaid, the offender shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.
Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-51
Shooting, stabbing, etc., with intent to maim, kill, etc
Applied in 47 court decisions — leading case Hosh v. Lucero (2012)
Most recently applied in United States v. Omar Alas (March 2023)
Code 1950, § 18.1-65; 1960, c. 358; 1975, cc. 14, 15.
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.