The North Carolina Supreme Court granted Wednesday the state’s petition for a writ of supersedeas to stay enforcement of the court of appeals’ judgment in State v. McKenzie, ___ N.C. App. ___ (January 15, 2012). McKenzie held, over a dissent, that the one-year disqualification of a defendant’s commercial driver’s license (CDL) based on the issuance of a civil license revocation for impaired driving is so punitive that it amounts to criminal punishment. Thus, the majority concluded that prosecution for impaired driving after such a CDL disqualification violated double jeopardy. McKenzie is a big deal in the world of DWI prosecutions. The Attorney General stated in the petition that more than 4,000 CDLs had been disqualified on the grounds at issue in McKenzie, and that more than one-quarter of these disqualifications still were pending. Defendants facing impaired driving charges following this sort of CDL revocation were moving before McKenzie to dismiss their criminal charges on double jeopardy grounds—the Attorney General reported that there are three additional pending appeals raising identical claims to McKenzie—and presumably many more will move for dismissal now. The stay affords the State some breathing room in these prosecutions while it seeks review of the court of appeals’ holding in the state supreme court. Given the stay, trial courts are not bound by McKenzie, though obviously they may still be persuaded to dismiss based on its reasoning. In other news: Yesterday, Attorney General Roy Cooper and Wake County District Attorney Colin Willoughby called for the General Assembly to pass [...]
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