Commonwealth v. Canales

Holding

Applying Code § 19.2-306.1 that places limitations on the sentence that a court may impose when an individual violates the terms of his probation, multiple technical violations arising from a single course of conduct or a single incident or considered at the same revocation hearing shall not be considered separate technical violations for the purposes of sentencing. However, the statute does not require a court to address all probation violations set forth in a major violation report in the same hearing, and a court has broad discretion in a revocation proceeding. The statute does not prohibit a court from addressing individual probation violations in separate hearings. Based on the evidence, here the circuit court could reasonably determine that the violations at issue were separate and distinct events and not part of a “single course of conduct” under Code § 19.2-306.1, were not part of a continuous sequence of behavior. The violations were separated by time periods that ranged from six days to over two months. Therefore, the circuit court did not err by addressing the violations in separate revocation hearings. As the sentencing limitations set forth in Code § 19.2-306.1 only applied to the first and second technical violations of probation, the circuit court could impose more than 14 days of active incarceration for the violations that were addressed in the set of hearings held on May 13, 2022. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the judgment of the Circuit Court of Arlington County is reinstated.