Opinion
Record No. 1150-93-1
Decided: January 17, 1995
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH, John K. Moore, Judge
Richard C. Clark, Assistant Public Defender (Office of the Public Defender, on brief), for appellant.
Robert Q. Harris, Assistant Attorney General (James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Present: Judges Baker, Willis and Elder
Pursuant to Code Sec. 17-116.010 this opinion is not designated for publication.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed, and this case is remanded for retrial, if the Commonwealth be so advised.
The trial court had jurisdiction to try this case. See Jamborsky v. Baskins, 247 Va. 506, 442 S.E.2d 636 (1994).
The trial court erred in refusing to suppress the detective's testimony (1) that Decosta admitted he had gone to "The Hole," a known drug trafficking area, and had borrowed a car from a friend who was a drug addict, and (2) that Decosta admitted he fled from the police because of previous charges on his record. These admissions were irrelevant to any issue on trial and were highly prejudicial to Decosta. The trial court should have required their deletion from the detective's account of Decosta's confession. See Smith v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 336, 228 S.E.2d 562 (1976); Moats v. Commonwealth, 12 Va. App. 349, 354, 404 S.E.2d 244, 246 (1991).
Citing Harward v. Commonwealth, 5 Va. App. 468, 473, 364 S.E.2d 511, 513 (1988), and Rule 5A:18, the Commonwealth contends that Decosta did not preserve the issue of admissibility by contemporaneous objection. We reject this argument. Harward addressed a tentative, conditional ruling in response to a motion in limine. The trial court's ruling in this case was neither tentative nor conditional. It held: "I am going to overrule your motion in limine. I think it all comes in. It's all part of his statement."
Reversed and remanded.