Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
State v. Hauser, ___ N.C. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___ (May. 19, 2020)
The defendant was convicted of obtaining property by false pretenses for selling boxes purportedly containing iPhones that contained only lug nuts. The defendant argued that the sentence of 36 months supervised probation was erroneous because the trial judge imposed a community punishment, which has a limit of 30 months probation. The Court of Appeals found that the trial judge imposed an intermediate punishment; the only indication to the contrary was a checkmark in the box for community punishment at the top of the judgment. Considering the sentencing hearing, the conditions imposed by the trial judge in the defendant’s presence, and the written judgment, the Court concluded that the mark in the community punishment box was a clerical error and remanded the case for correction.