Background
Martin Monroe was convicted of strangulation in September 2021 and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment with 3 years and 10 months suspended. As a condition of the suspension, Monroe was placed on supervised probation to begin upon his release from incarceration. Monroe was released on April 21, 2022, but never reported to his probation officer for orientation.
Between May and August 2022, Probation Officer Brandon Massenburg attempted multiple times to contact Monroe by phone and mail. Monroe failed to respond to any of these efforts. In August 2022, Massenburg filed a major violation report alleging that Monroe had violated two conditions of probation: (1) failing to report as instructed (Condition 6), and (2) absconding from supervision (Condition 11). Five months later, another probation officer confirmed that Monroe’s whereabouts remained unknown despite checks of local jails and the VINE system. Monroe was arrested in April 2024 based on an outstanding capias and a revocation hearing was held in June 2024.
At the hearing, Monroe’s defense argued that he could not have absconded from probation because he never reported to probation in the first place—absconding requires first establishing contact with a probation officer, which Monroe never did. The trial court rejected this argument and found Monroe in violation of both conditions, revoking his suspended sentence and imposing 14 days of active incarceration.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision. The central issue was whether Virginia Code § 19.2-306.1(A)(x), which makes it a technical violation to fail to “maintain contact with the probation officer whereby his whereabouts are no longer known to the probation officer,” applies only when a probationer has established contact and then lost it, or whether it also covers a probationer who never initiates contact at all.
The court held that the statute applies in both scenarios. While acknowledging the phrase “failure to maintain contact” is ambiguous, the court concluded that the more reasonable interpretation is that a failure to commence contact necessarily results in a failure to maintain contact. The court reasoned that “an obligation to maintain implicitly contains an obligation to commence.” This interpretation is supported by three considerations: (1) it is logically consistent with Virginia Supreme Court precedent distinguishing commencement from maintenance; (2) it represents the more liberal construction of a probation statute, which should be liberally construed to serve the remedial purpose of rehabilitation; and (3) it prevents an absurd result where a probationer who never attempts contact would be in a better position than one who contacts their probation officer and then absconds.
The court also found sufficient evidence that Monroe had violated the condition. Although Monroe’s whereabouts were initially known (an apartment in Petersburg listed as his “last known address”), they became “no longer known” as a result of his failure to respond to his probation officer’s communications over a nearly two-year period despite multiple attempts to contact him.
Key Takeaways
- A probationer can violate Virginia’s “maintain contact” provision even if they never initiate contact with their probation officer, provided their whereabouts subsequently become unknown to the supervising officer.
- The statutory phrase “failure to maintain contact” is sufficiently broad to encompass a failure to ever commence contact, not merely a failure to continue established contact.
- Probation statutes are to be liberally construed to serve their remedial purpose of rehabilitation and to provide courts with tools to supervise offenders.
- A probationer’s prolonged silence in response to a probation officer’s multiple attempts to make contact can establish that the probationer’s whereabouts are “no longer known,” satisfying the statutory requirement for an absconding violation.
Why It Matters
This decision significantly expands Virginia courts’ authority to find probation violations for absconding. Previously, defendants might have argued that failing to ever appear for probation was categorically different from absconding—a term that typically implies leaving a place of supervision. The Monroe decision closes this loophole by holding that a probationer cannot evade accountability by simply never showing up in the first place. This interpretation gives courts greater leverage in managing probationers who make no effort to comply with reporting requirements.
The decision also illustrates the tension between two technical violation provisions: Code § 19.2-306.1(A)(iii) (failure to report within three days of release) and Code § 19.2-306.1(A)(x) (failure to maintain contact so that whereabouts are unknown). The court navigated this by holding that subsection (x) applies after the three-day window closes, preventing overlap while treating the more egregious misconduct—prolonged loss of contact—as a “second technical violation” subject to harsher penalties. For practitioners, this decision means that probation officers have two distinct routes to file violations for non-reporting, and the longer-term absence of contact will likely be pursued as the more serious absconding charge.