State v. Watlington: Court Clarifies Unit of Prosecution for Hit and Run

Author’s Note: This post has been modified from its original based on the reissuance of the opinion on April 16, 2025.  Earlier last month, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Watlington, COA23-1106, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2025). Among other issues, in its decision the Court addressed an open question: what is the unit of prosecution for a hit and run? May the defendant be charged once for leaving the scene of a crash that causes injury, or instead may a separate charge be issued for each person injured? (Shea Denning wrote about that issue and the framework for analysis in 2014, noting then that the question had not been directly addressed by our appellate courts). We now have an answer: the unit of prosecution is the number of crashes from which the defendant fled, not the number of people injured. Read on for further details. Background. Units of prosecution can be explained as the number of counts or charges that come from a single course of conduct. For example, the unit of prosecution for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is the continuous act of possession, not each firearm possessed. So, a person who during one time and at one location, possessed multiple firearms while being a convicted felon may only be convicted of one count of possession of firearm by a convicted felon. State v. Wiggins, 210 N.C. App. 128 (2011). In contrast, the unit of prosecution for possession of child pornography is each image possessed. See [...]