A person tried for felony shall be personally present during the trial. If when arraigned he will not plead or answer and does not confess his guilt the court shall have the plea of not guilty entered and the trial shall proceed as if the accused had put in that plea. But for the purposes of this section a motion for a continuance, whether made before or after arraignment, shall not be deemed to be part of the trial.
Va. Code Ann. § 19.2-259
On trial for felony, accused to be present; when court may enter plea for him, and trial go on
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 2 Va. App. 59 - Royal v. Commonwealth (1986)
Most recently applied in 812 F. Supp. 1400 - Turner v. Williams (February 1993)
Code 1950, § 19.1-240; 1960, c. 366; 1975, c. 495.
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.