Walter Delany Booker, Jr. v. Commonwealth of Virginia

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that a defendant had not established a reasonable basis for contesting guilt when he “did not proffer any defense beyond simply making the prosecution prove its case”
• holding that a defendant had not established a reasonable basis for contesting guilt when he relied on assertions that were “superficial,” “lacked substance,” and raised a “merely formal” defense
• holding no abuse of discretion in imposing all eight years of a previously suspended sentence
• providing that a guilty plea is ordinarily “a waiver of all defenses other than those jurisdictional” (quoting Peyton v. King, 210 Va. 194, 196, 169 S.E.2d 569, 571 (1969))
• noting that the appellant’s statement “without elaboration that ‘it was others’” who possessed the drugs was insufficient because he “offered no evidence to support anything other than an insubstantial or ‘formal’ defense”
• noting that “the bare possibility that a juror or jury would find in favor of appellant at trial, by itself, does not require a trial court to set aside a guilty plea” (quoting United States v. Hyde, 520 U.S. 670, 677 (1997))

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).