| How a record is interpreted is up to the jurisdiction doing the interpreting. State laws are "all over the place" with regards to determining when/if an out of state conviction should be counted as a felony. Even within a state, the rules can differ depending, for example, if the previous conviction is being used for sentencing enhancement, licensing, etc.
Many follow an old common law rule that if you could have been sentenced to more than one year in prison at trial, then it is a felony. What you actually got is not important, rather it is a question of what the maximum potential was.
Others will ask "Would those actions be a felony in this jurisdiction"? Sometimes they'll just look at the title of the crime, other times they'll look into the details of the act itself.
Another twist in some court-martial cases is whether or not your crimes were "military" crimes - meaning things that really don't have civilian equivalents in most criminal codes. For example, "unauthorized absence" may not be considered a felony (or maybe even a conviction) simply because it does not appear in state statutes.
So, even in the state of Virginia, your convictions could be 'treated' differently depending on which agencies you are dealing with or what use the record is being put to. There is no simple general answer. |