Virginia robbery charges and penalties are set out in Virginia Code § 18.2-58, which divides the offense into four felony tiers based on how much force or harm was involved. The low end is a Class 6 felony carrying one to five years in prison for a robbery accomplished by threat alone. The high end is a Class 2 felony carrying twenty years to life when the robbery causes serious bodily injury or death. Every tier is a felony, and the statute itself does not define “robbery” — Virginia courts still use the common law meaning: taking someone’s property, from their person or presence, by force or intimidation, with intent to keep it permanently.
The Four Tiers and What Each One Carries
The 2024 amendments reorganized § 18.2-58 into four distinct classifications. The tier a prosecutor charges depends on what the offender did during the taking, not what was stolen or how much it was worth. Sentencing ranges come from the general felony penalty statute, § 18.2-10.
Class 2 Felony — Serious Bodily Injury or Death
Robbery that causes serious bodily injury or death to any person is a Class 2 felony.1Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-58 – Robbery; Penalties The injury does not have to happen to the property owner; harm to a bystander during the robbery triggers the same tier. “Serious bodily injury” is defined by reference to § 18.2-51.4 and generally means injury that creates a substantial risk of death or causes permanent disfigurement or prolonged impairment.
Penalty: life in prison or any term of at least twenty years, plus a possible fine of up to $100,000.2Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-10 – Punishment for Conviction of Felony; Penalty
Class 3 Felony — Firearm Used or Displayed
Robbery committed by using or displaying a firearm in a threatening manner is a Class 3 felony.1Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-58 – Robbery; Penalties The statute pulls its firearm definition from § 18.2-308.2:2. No one has to be shot or hurt. Brandishing the gun during the robbery is enough, and the firearm element pushes the offense above what the same conduct would be with a knife or a club.
Penalty: five to twenty years in prison, plus a possible fine of up to $100,000.2Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-10 – Punishment for Conviction of Felony; Penalty
Class 5 Felony — Physical Force or Non-Firearm Deadly Weapon
A robbery that involves physical force without causing serious bodily injury, or that involves a deadly weapon other than a firearm, is a Class 5 felony.1Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-58 – Robbery; Penalties Shoving someone to grab their bag lands here. So does threatening a victim with a knife, a baseball bat, a box cutter, or a machete. The dividing line with Class 3 is simply whether the weapon is a firearm.
Penalty: one to ten years in prison. A judge or jury that finds mitigating circumstances can instead impose up to twelve months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, or both.2Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-10 – Punishment for Conviction of Felony; Penalty
Class 6 Felony — Threat or Intimidation Alone
The lowest tier covers robbery accomplished through threat, intimidation, or other means that do not involve a deadly weapon.1Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-58 – Robbery; Penalties A verbal threat to harm someone unless they hand over money, with no weapon visible, is the classic example. The offense is still a felony with lasting consequences, but the legislature treated unarmed intimidation as warranting less punishment than an armed robbery.
Penalty: one to five years in prison. A judge or jury may instead impose up to twelve months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, or both.2Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-10 – Punishment for Conviction of Felony; Penalty
The option to reduce a Class 5 or Class 6 sentence to jail rather than prison is a real one. A sympathetic record and the right facts can keep someone in a local jail for up to a year instead of a state correctional facility. The conviction itself remains a felony either way.
What the Prosecution Has to Prove
Because the statute does not define robbery, Virginia courts apply the common law elements recognized in cases like Butts v. Commonwealth: a taking of another person’s property, from their person or presence, against their will, by violence or intimidation, with intent to permanently deprive the owner of it. Every element has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Two of those elements decide more cases than people expect.
Intent is the first. The prosecution has to show the accused meant to keep the property for good, not borrow it or grab it on impulse to return later. Evidence of concealment, flight, or sale of the item builds the intent case. Evidence that the accused took the property openly and never hid it cuts the other way.
Timing of the force is the second. The violence or threat has to happen before or during the taking. If someone pockets an item peacefully and only becomes violent while running from a store employee, the robbery element may fail. The conduct still may support theft and assault charges, but not robbery, and that distinction can mean the difference between a jail sentence and a decade in prison.
The “person or presence” element reaches further than pickpocketing. Property sitting across the room still counts as being in the victim’s presence if the victim could have kept control of it without the force or threat. The practical test courts apply is whether the victim was close enough and aware enough to intervene.
Defenses That Actually Change the Outcome
Most robbery defenses attack one of the elements above. If reasonable doubt lands on any single element, the robbery charge fails, though lesser charges may remain.
- No intent to permanently deprive. A “claim of right” argument — that the accused believed they were recovering their own property or taking something they had permission to use — undercuts the theft component. It does not excuse the force used, but it can knock out the robbery charge itself.
- Force came after the taking. When violence happened only during escape, the prosecution often has to pivot to separate theft and assault charges rather than robbery.
- Property was not in the victim’s presence. A narrow defense, but it applies when the item was in another room or location the victim could not have reached or protected.
- Misidentification. Robberies happen fast, often in poor lighting and sometimes with masked offenders. Challenging the reliability of eyewitness identification is one of the most common defense strategies in these cases.
None of these are automatic wins. Prosecutors often come to trial with surveillance video, DNA, or multiple witnesses. But weak identification or genuinely unclear timing of force is where acquittals and reduced charges tend to come from.
What a Robbery Conviction Costs Beyond Prison
Every tier under § 18.2-58 is a felony, and a Virginia felony conviction carries a set of automatic consequences that outlast the sentence.
Civil rights are stripped on conviction. A person convicted of a felony in Virginia loses the right to vote, serve on a jury, run for public office, and become a notary public.3Restore Your Rights Virginia. Restoration of Rights Process Getting those rights back requires petitioning the Governor through the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and approval is discretionary. Firearm rights are not covered by that restoration process.
Federal law bars firearm possession for anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts Every tier of robbery under § 18.2-58 meets that threshold. The ban is nationwide, it survives the sentence, and because Virginia’s gubernatorial restoration does not cover firearms, it is effectively permanent for most people.
Employment doors close too. Virginia designates robbery as a “barrier crime” for several regulated fields, which bars convicted individuals from working in child day care centers, children’s residential facilities, and home care or hospice settings. Separate federal regulations prohibit anyone with an armed or felony unarmed robbery conviction within the past ten years from working as an airport security screener or flight crew member. Licensing boards in other professions can still deny an application when the conviction relates directly to the occupation, though they cannot refuse someone solely for having a record.
Other Charges That May Come With a Robbery Case
A few related exposures are worth knowing about because they often appear alongside a § 18.2-58 charge rather than instead of it.
Carjacking is a separate offense under § 18.2-58.1. It covers the intentional seizure of a motor vehicle from another person through violence, intimidation, or threat of a weapon, and the penalty is harsher than most robbery tiers: fifteen years to life in prison, with no option to reduce the sentence to jail time. A single incident can produce both carjacking and robbery charges.
Federal Hobbs Act charges can attach when the robbery affects interstate commerce, which in practice covers most commercial establishments.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 1951 – Interference With Commerce by Threats or Violence A Hobbs Act conviction carries up to twenty years in federal prison, served in the federal Bureau of Prisons with no parole. State and federal charges can be brought for the same conduct without violating double jeopardy, since the two governments are separate sovereigns. Federal prosecutors tend to take cases involving organized robbery rings, federally insured banks, or patterns of commercial robbery.
Finally, there is no deadline for bringing a robbery charge. Virginia imposes no statute of limitations on felonies.6Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 19.2-8 – Limitation of Prosecutions Section 19.2-8 limits only misdemeanors and certain financial penalties. A robbery charge can be filed years or decades after the incident as long as the evidence holds.