Time is Up:  Failures To Comply Are Once Again Reported

Among the Chief Justice’s early emergency directives and orders to address court operations in light of the COVID-19 outbreak were extensions for the time for paying monies owed in criminal cases. Those directives, which extended the time for doing certain acts in criminal cases and directed clerks to delay the entry of reports of failures to comply, were extended and modified in subsequent orders. The upshot was that defendants ordered to pay sums that would have resulted in entry of a “failure to comply” and the assessment of additional costs (and, in Chapter 20 cases, a report to DMV that would trigger a license revocation) had until July 31, 2020 to pay monies owed without incurring those consequences. That date passed last Friday, so clerks now are entering failures to comply, assessing the $50 in costs and reporting the entry to DMV in Chapter 20 cases. What are failures to comply? Clerks enter a failure to comply or FTC when a defendant fails to pay a fine, penalty, or costs within 40 days of the date specified in the court’s judgment. See G.S. 7A-304(a)(6). That entry results in a $50 cost. In Chapter 20 cases, the clerk also reports the FTC to DMV, see G.S. 20-24.2, which then must revoke the person’s driver’s license, see G.S. 20-24.1(a)(2), by order effective 60 days after it is mailed. (The person may prevent the revocation from going into effect by paying the amounts owed before the effective date of the revocation order. See G.S. [...]