Johnson v. Commonwealth, 819 S.E.2d 425

Johnson was convicted of rape in 2005 and released on a partially suspended 30-year sentence conditioned on supervised probation and no contact with minors.
In May 2016 two teenage girls reported an encounter with a man who identified himself as “Justice” and later texted them; they located a picture online and identified the man as Johnson.
Probation officer filed a major violation report; the circuit court held a revocation hearing after a capias was issued for alleged probation violations.
The Commonwealth introduced deputy Greene’s testimony, the girls’ written statements, and screenshots of text messages (hearsay) identifying the contact and linking it to Johnson; defense objected under due process/confrontation grounds (reliability/authenticity).
The court admitted the hearsay as sufficiently reliable under the Henderson factors, found Johnson violated probation (also noting a separate perjury conviction and conduct toward his PO), revoked 20 years and re-suspended 15.
The Court of Appeals denied relief (calling any confrontation error harmless); the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed, holding the record established sufficient reliability and thus no due process violation.

Issue	Johnson's Argument	Commonwealth's Argument	Held
Whether admitting hearsay statements from the girls violated Johnson’s due process right to confront witnesses in a probation revocation hearing	Admission deprived Johnson of the limited confrontation rights applicable in revocation proceedings because he could not cross-examine the girls and the Commonwealth had not shown the statements were reliable	Hearsay is admissible in revocation hearings if it has indicia of reliability (Henderson); the Commonwealth presented corroborating evidence (texts, matching age, employment, description, deputy’s investigation) sufficient to show reliability	The Court held the hearsay was sufficiently reliable when viewed as a whole (texts, employment/age match, deputy verification, consistency) and thus admission did not violate due process/confrontation rights
Whether any confrontation error (if present) was harmless	Johnson argued any deprivation of confrontation was not harmless and should not be excused	The Court of Appeals treated any error as harmless given uncontested other violations; the Commonwealth urged affirmance	The Virginia Supreme Court did not decide harmlessness because it concluded there was no confrontation error—the hearsay was reliable and admissible

Henderson v. Commonwealth, 285 Va. 318 (2013) (establishes reliability and balancing tests and lists indicia of trustworthiness for admitting hearsay in revocation hearings)
Turner v. Commonwealth, 278 Va. 739 (2009) (polygraph results are not demonstrably reliable hearsay in revocation proceedings)
Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778 (1973) (probation/parole revocation is not a criminal prosecution; full Sixth Amendment rights do not automatically apply)
Black v. Romano, 471 U.S. 606 (1985) (due process limits on revocation; right to confrontation in revocation is more limited)
Summers v. Syptak, 293 Va. 606 (2017) (appellate courts may affirm on alternate grounds apparent in the record)
Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400 (1965) (Sixth Amendment confrontation right is fundamental and applied to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment)