Case Summaries – N.C. Court of Appeals (August 2, 2022)

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on August 2, 2022. This summary will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present. A juvenile-age felony conviction may count towards violent habitual felon status mandating a sentence of life without parole. State v. McDougald, 2022-NCCOA-526, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Aug. 2, 2022). In this Harnett County case, defendant appealed the denial of his motion for appropriate relief (MAR). The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of defendant’s MAR and the imposition of life without parole. Defendant first pleaded guilty to second degree kidnapping, a class E felony, in 1984, when he was sixteen years old. Four years later in 1988, defendant pleaded no contest to second-degree sexual offense (class H felony), common law robbery (class D felony), and armed robbery (class D felony). In 2001, a jury found defendant guilty of second-degree kidnapping, and subsequently of violent habitual felon status due to his prior felonies. The sentence imposed was mandatory life without parole. Defendant appealed that judgment, but the Court of Appeals found no error in State v. McDougald, 190 N.C. App. 675 (2008) (unpublished). The current MAR at issue was filed in 2017. Defendant asserted two grounds for relief: (1) that defendant’s trial counsel was ineffective during plea negotiations because defendant was not adequately advised that he would receive mandatory life without parole if convicted, and (2) that applying violent habitual [...]