Court rules Virginians can’t be charged with fleeing police if officers are too far away

The Virginia Court of Appeals overruled a man’s misdemeanor conviction for fleeing from police after ruling the Lynchburg police officer who attempted to make the arrest didn’t get close enough to the suspect to have a realistic chance of grabbing him.

In an opinion revealing what the court described as a legal quirk unique to Virginia, the court found that an officer telling someone to stop from 20 yards away doesn’t satisfy a rule requiring officers to have the “immediate physical ability to place the person under arrest.”

The opinion applies mainly to foot chases, not a separate eluding law that criminalizes fleeing police in a motor vehicle.