Commonwealth v. Pannell

Present: 	All the Justices
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
v. 	Record No. 011570 	OPINION BY JUSTICE ELIZABETH B. LACY
April 19, 2002
DANZELL PANNELL
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the use
of the term "original proceedings" formerly contained in Code
§ 16.1-291 refers to the adjudicatory or dispositional phase
of a juvenile proceeding.*
In 1997, Danzell Pannell pled guilty to a charge of
unauthorized use of an automobile in the City of Alexandria
Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court and was placed
on probation. 	Two years later, in 1999, the juvenile court
found that Pannell had violated the conditions of his
probation and revoked his probation. 	Pannell appealed the
juvenile court judgment to the circuit court, arguing that
former Code § 16.1-291 required the exclusion of hearsay
evidence and use of a reasonable doubt standard when
determining whether he violated the terms of his probation.
The circuit court rejected Pannell's arguments, found him in
violation of the terms of his probation, and committed him to
* Code § 16.1-291(A) was amended in 2001 and the sentence
at issue in this case was deleted.

the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice for an
indeterminate period.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals, en banc, reversed the
judgment of the trial court, holding that former Code § 16.1-
291 prohibited the admission of hearsay testimony in a
probation revocation proceeding and required that the
violations of probation be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pannell v. Commonwealth, 34 Va. App. 287, 294-95, 540 S.E.2d
527, 531, aff'd en banc, 35 Va. App. 643, 547 S.E.2d 529
(2001). 	We awarded the Commonwealth an appeal.
In 1999, Code § 16.1-291(A) included the following
sentence:
Proceedings to revoke or modify probation,
protective supervision or parole shall be governed
by the procedures, safeguards, rights and duties
applicable to the original proceedings.
Relying on the dictionary or ordinary meaning of the phrase
"original proceedings," the Court of Appeals concluded that
the phrase referred to the "'origin or beginning' of the
relevant prosecution, clearly the adjudicatory phase."
Pannell, 34 Va. App. at 294, 540 S.E.2d at 531. 	The Court of
Appeals, however, construed the phrase "original proceedings"
out of context. 	Code § 16.1-291 addresses the procedures
applicable to revocation or modification of probation and
protective supervision. 	Probation and protective supervision
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are dispositions available to the court after the adjudication
stage of the juvenile proceeding. 	Accordingly, the original
proceedings referred to are not the original adjudicatory
proceedings in the prosecution, but the original dispositional
proceedings.
None of Pannell's alternative arguments offered in
support of the result reached by the Court of Appeals are
persuasive. 	There is no constitutional requirement that a
court apply a reasonable doubt standard or exclude hearsay
evidence in an adult probation revocation proceeding, Gagnon
v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 782, 789 (1973) (applying the due
process protections established in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408
U.S. 471 (1972), to probation revocation proceedings), nor are
such standards required in juvenile proceedings. 	While
Pannell argues that imposing such due process protections in
the juvenile context would have been reasonable, it is equally
reasonable to assume that the General Assembly intended that
such protections were not required in juvenile probation
revocation proceedings just as they were not required in adult
probation revocation proceedings. 	Finally, the General
Assembly's elimination of the sentence at issue as part of the
2001 amendments to Code § 16.1-291, does not require a finding
that the General Assembly's action was undertaken to alter the
meaning of the phrase "original proceedings."
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For the above reasons, the judgment of the Court of
Appeals will be reversed and the judgment of the circuit court
reinstated.
Reversed and reinstated.
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