Arrest of Judgment

When can a court arrest judgment in a case? And what does it mean to do so? The concept of arresting judgment has been around for a long time in North Carolina. In cases dating back to the 1790s, such a motion was the vehicle for raising all sorts of issues, from defective charging instruments, State v. Adams, 1 N.C. 56 (1793), to “the late hour at which the court came to the cause,” State v. Higgins, 1 N.C. 36,  (1792). Nowadays the common-law motion in arrest of judgment has, at least in part, been supplanted by the broad statutory authority of a motion for appropriate relief. G.S. 15A-1411(c) (“The relief formerly available by motion in arrest of judgment . . . is available by motion for appropriate relief.”). But arrest of judgment is still the proper course of action in certain circumstances. Those circumstances fall into two broad categories that lead to different results. The first type of arrest of judgment is one that vacates a judgment in response to a “fatal flaw on the face of the record”—usually a defect in the indictment. See, e.g., State v. Harris, 219 N.C. App. 590 (2012). The effect of that sort of arrest of judgment is to vacate a conviction. See State v. Pendergraft, 238 N.C. App. 516 (2014). The second type of arrest of judgment is used to remedy double jeopardy or cumulative punishment concerns that contravene legislative intent. A common example in the case law involves a defendant convicted of [...]