Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
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This compendium includes significant criminal cases by the U.S. Supreme Court & N.C. appellate courts, Nov. 2008 – Present. Selected 4th Circuit cases also are included.
Jessica Smith prepared case summaries Nov. 2008-June 4, 2019; later summaries are prepared by other School staff.
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In this Watauga County case, defendant appealed the sentence he received after pleading guilty to possession of a stolen firearm, arguing error in calculating his prior record level. The Court of Appeals majority agreed, vacating defendant’s sentence and remanding for resentencing.
During sentencing, the trial court calculated defendant’s prior record level as Level III with six points, including one point for defendant’s misdemeanor conviction of driving while license revoked for impaired driving (DWLR-Impaired Revocation). On appeal, defendant argued that the DWLR-Impaired Revocation conviction was exempt from prior record level calculations under G.S. 15A-1340.14(b)(5) as it is an “other misdemeanor traffic offense” identified under the statute. Slip Op. at 2-3. This led the court to conclude that defendant “should have been sentenced as a PRL II, rather than a PRL III.” Id. at 3.
The State argued that this error was not prejudicial, but the court disagreed, noting the holding in State v. Williams, 355 N.C. 501 (2002), that a prior record level error prejudices a defendant even if the sentence given fell within the appropriate presumptive range.
Judge Murry dissented, agreeing that the prior record level calculation was error but that the error was harmless and did not justify remand for resentencing.
In this Cleveland County case, defendant petitioned for a writ of certiorari, arguing error in sentencing him at an inflated prior record level. The State conceded the error. The Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and remanded for resentencing with the appropriate prior record level.
In March of 2021, a jury convicted defendant of two charges related to controlled substances; after the verdict but before sentencing, defendant entered a plea agreement to two additional charges and attaining habitual felon status. During the sentencing hearing, the State submitted a worksheet showing sixteen points assigned to defendant based on his seven prior misdemeanors and three prior felonies, along with defendant being on probation at the time of the offenses. The court sentenced defendant as a level V offender.
Taking up defendant’s argument, the Court of Appeals explained that the trial court improperly calculated defendant’s prior record level, which should have been level IV. The State conceded that defendant was improperly assigned additional points based on previous convictions that should have been excluded. The court walked through the appropriate calculation, noting that the highest total that could be assigned to defendant was thirteen points, justifying level IV. As a result, the court remanded for resentencing.
The trial court erred in calculating the defendant’s prior record level points. Specifically, it made an arithmetic error, finding that the points totaled 18 when in fact they totaled 17. This error lead the trial court to sentence the defendant as a prior record level VI offender instead of as a record level V offender. The State conceded the mathematical error but argued the error was harmless. The court agreed, noting that it has repeatedly held that an erroneous prior record level calculation does not prejudice the defendant if the trial court’s sentence is within the presumptive range at the correct level, as it was here.