Cappe v. Commonwealth

Syllabus

02/13/2025 Upon review, the decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. The judgment that evidence against defendant in this case was sufficient to sustain convictions for murder as well as use of a firearm in committing murder is affirmed. Considering the circumstantial and indirect evidence, including overt actions of the parties, a factfinder could conclude that this defendant was one of the participants, that the three men did not act spontaneously to find and murder the victim, and they had conspired to plan the murder. The evidence was thus sufficient for this defendant to be convicted of conspiracy. Finally, this defendant assigned error to the Court of Appeals' holding that error in failing to admit a witness's identification testimony was harmless. This barren assignment of error is unsupported by any argument, the defendant's brief is devoid of any standard of review that would govern this assignment, nor is there any argument stating why the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the error was harmless. Failure to brief an assignment of error constitutes a waiver of the argument, and it is not the role of a court to search the record to interpret an appellant's contention and correct deficiencies in a brief. Nor is it a court's function to comb through the record in order to ferret-out the validity of appellant's claims. Consequently, the Court declines to reach the merits of this assignment of error. This order shall be published in the Virginia Reports and certified to the Court of Appeals and the Circuit Court of the City of Newport News.