Opinion
Record No. 1082-93-3
Decided: December 13, 1994
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, George E. Honts, III, Judge
Affirmed.
Thomas M. Simons for appellant.
(James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney General; Margaret Ann B. Walker, Assistant Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Present: Judges Barrow, Coleman and Senior Judge Hodges
Pursuant to Code Sec. 17-116.010 this opinion is not designated for publication.
In this appeal, we conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's convictions of malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
On appeal, we view the evidence and any reasonable inferences fairly deducible therefrom in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. Higginbotham v. Commonwealth, 216 Va. 349, 352, 218 S.E.2d 534, 537 (1975). We regard the Commonwealth's credible evidence as true and discard all of the defendant's evidence in conflict. Parks v. Commonwealth, 221 Va. 492, 498, 270 S.E.2d 755, 759 (1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1029 (1981).
The Commonwealth presented evidence that when the victim went to visit the defendant, the defendant shot him once in the chest using a .44 caliber shell fired from a shotgun. The victim testified that the two men were forty to fifty feet apart when he was shot. He also testified that he did not have a knife on his person nor in his car that day, nor did he threaten the defendant. The other Commonwealth eyewitnesses, the girlfriend and the son, testified that the two were approximately thirty-nine or forty feet apart and that the victim was unarmed.
In support of his claim of self-defense, the defendant and his witnesses testified that the victim had threatened the defendant with a knife and that the two men were eight to ten feet apart at the time of the shooting. However, "[s]elf-defense is an affirmative defense which the accused must prove by introducing sufficient evidence to raise a reasonable doubt about his guilt." Smith v. Commonwealth, 17 Va. App. 68, 71, 435 S.E.2d 414, 417 (1993). Furthermore, whether the evidence raises such a reasonable doubt is a question of fact. Yarborough v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 971, 979, 234 S.E.2d 286, 292 (1977). We will not disturb a trial judge's findings of fact unless plainly wrong or unsupported by the evidence. Id. We do not find the Commonwealth's evidence "inherently incredible, or so contrary to human experience as to render it unworthy of belief." Fisher v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 296, 299, 321 S.E.2d 202, 204 (1984). Therefore, we hold that the Commonwealth's evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's convictions.
Affirmed.