State v. Bishop, ___ N.C. App. ___, 805 S.E.2d 367 (Oct. 3, 2017)

The court declined to issue a writ of certiorari to consider the defendant’s argument that the trial court erred in finding that he was a recidivist and thus qualified for lifetime SBM. The defendant failed to timely appeal on this ground. The court declined to issue the writ because the defendant had not shown that his argument has merit or that error was probably committed below. Here, the defendant argued that his convictions for indecent liberties against his daughter could not count as a “prior conviction” because they occurred on the same day as his guilty plea to the additional counts of indecent liberties against different victims. The court noted that the defendant was not simultaneously convicted of the offenses that rendered him a recidivist. After he was convicted and sentenced for offenses against his daughter, he plead guilty to separate offenses that occurred more than a decade earlier. At the time he pled guilty to those offenses, he had already been convicted and sentenced for the offenses against his daughter. Thus, he had a prior conviction for a reportable offense at the time the trial court sentenced him on the new convictions. The court concluded: “That his prior conviction occurred earlier the same day rather than the day before, or many years before, is irrelevant . . . .” 

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