State Supreme Court on State's Ability to Obtain Review of MAR Rulings

Last month, the Supreme Court of North Carolina decided State v. Stubbs, an important case regarding appellate review of orders granting motions for appropriate relief. Background. Larry Stubbs pled guilty to burglary in 1973 and was sentenced to life in prison. In 2011, he filed an MAR, arguing that the life sentence violated the Eighth Amendment. A superior court judge concurred and resentenced him to 30 years. The State filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the court of appeals, which agreed to review the case. A divided court determined that the trial court had erred and reinstated the original judgment, as Jamie discussed in this post. The defendant appealed to the state supreme court. The issue. The issue before the supreme court was not whether the superior court judge was right or wrong on the merits of the Eighth Amendment claim. Rather, the issue was whether the court of appeals had jurisdiction to review the order granting the defendant’s motion for appropriate relief. Stubbs contended that there is no statutory provision or other authority allowing the State to obtain review of such orders, while the State argued that the appellate courts have jurisdiction and that the petition for a writ of certiorari properly invoked it. Whether the State has an avenue for review of MAR orders favoring defendants has been controversial at least since State v. Starkey, 177 N.C. App. 264 (2006), which I previously discussed here. The ruling. The supreme court ruled for the State, based on [...]