A motion to withdraw a plea of guilty or nolo contendere may be made only before sentence is imposed or imposition of a sentence is suspended; but to correct manifest injustice, the court within twenty-one days after entry of a final order may set aside the judgment of conviction and permit the defendant to withdraw his plea.
Va. Code Ann. § 19.2-296
Withdrawal of plea of guilty
Applied in 13 court decisions — leading case 40 Va. App. 255 - Congdon v. Congdon (2003)
Most recently applied in 68 Va. App. 183 - Damien Cameron Spencer v. Commonwealth of Virginia (November 2017)
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.