State v. Crompton
| Decision Date | 11 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | 180A20 |
| Citation | 868 S.E.2d 48,380 N.C. 220 |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. Justin Blake CROMPTON |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Brenda Eaddy, Special Deputy Attorney General, and Caden W. Hayes, Assistant Attorney General, for the State-appellee.
Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by Sterling Rozear, Assistant Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellant.
¶ 1 Defendant challenges the sufficiency of the allegations against him, contained in six probation violation reports, that he committed the revocable probation violation of absconding. Defendant also disputes the sufficiency of the State's factual basis for its absconding allegation, contending that even if the charge is taken as true, it cannot serve as the basis for a finding that defendant had in fact absconded. In this case, we determine that the probation violation reports at issue effectively pleaded that defendant absconded probation and that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in revoking defendant's probation upon concluding that defendant had, in fact, absconded his probation. We therefore affirm the trial court's decision.
¶ 2 Defendant pleaded guilty to one count each of felony breaking and entering, felony larceny after breaking and entering, felony breaking and entering a motor vehicle, felony altering the serial number of a firearm, and misdemeanor carrying a concealed gun, along with three counts of felony obtaining property by false pretenses, on 24 April 2017. The Superior Court, Buncombe County entered six consecutive judgments sentencing defendant to a minimum of 36 months and a maximum of 102 months of imprisonment, but suspended the activation of this sentence in favor of 36 months of supervised probation. Among the terms of defendant's probation were his requirements to (1) report regularly as instructed by the probation officer; (2) answer the reasonable inquiries of the officer; (3) report and obtain approval for any change in address; (4) report and obtain approval before leaving the jurisdiction of the trial court; (5) abstain from using drugs; and (6) "not abscond, by willfully avoiding supervision or by willfully making the defendant's whereabouts unknown to the supervising probation officer."
¶ 3 Defendant soon began to violate the terms of his probation, resulting in his supervising probation officer issuing violation reports on each of defendant's cases two months later on 28 June 2017. The probation violation reports alleged that defendant missed curfew on several dates, left the jurisdiction of the trial court without permission on multiple dates, and admitted to the usage of marijuana while on probation. The violation reports were called for consideration by the trial court on 7 September 2017; defendant admitted that he violated the conditions of his probation as alleged. The trial court found defendant to be in willful violation of his probation and ordered him to serve a 90-day term of confinement with the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction and to complete 90 days of house arrest upon release from his prison confinement.
¶ 4 Defendant tested positive for marijuana again in April of 2018, after completing his period of confinement and subsequent house arrest as the consequences for the probation violations which he admitted on 7 September 2017. On 14 May 2018, which was the day that defendant was scheduled to report to the probation office for an appointment, defendant called his supervising probation officer Jamie Harris by telephone and left a voicemail message that defendant would be unable to keep the day's appointment due to an altercation which occurred on the previous night between defendant and defendant's brother with whom the probationer lived. Officer Harris returned defendant's telephone call and left a voicemail message instructing defendant to provide updated information concerning defendant's residential situation and to report to the probation office on 16 May 2018. Contrary to Officer Harris’ directive, defendant did not contact the probation officer again. Defendant's whereabouts were unknown to the State until defendant's arrest almost three months later on 8 August 2018.
¶ 5 Officer Harris conducted an absconding investigation in which the probation officer visited defendant's last known address on two occasions, called all of the references and telephone contact numbers that defendant had provided during defendant's term of probation, called the local hospital by telephone to determine if defendant had been admitted, reviewed law enforcement databases to ensure that defendant was not in custody, and called a vocational rehabilitation program in which defendant was enrolled in order to determine if the program providers had any knowledge of defendant's whereabouts. Having exhausted all available avenues of contacting defendant, and being cognizant of defendant's earlier probation violation which Officer Harris considered to have put defendant on notice of "the ramifications of absconding," on 23 May 2018 defendant's probation officer issued another probation violation report and accompanying order for arrest in each of defendant's cases. The probation violation report in each case alleged that defendant had willfully violated the following conditions of probation:
¶ 6 Defendant was arrested on 8 August 2018 and his alleged probation violations came on for hearing on 25 October 2018. At the hearing, Officer Harris provided the trial court with a synopsis of the investigation which he conducted, along with a factual basis for the non-absconding alleged probation violations listed on the violation reports. Defendant admitted his commission of all of the alleged probation violations as detailed—including the allegation of absconding supervision—and represented that he had turned himself in for the purposes of arrest and for "the sake of ... his family." Defendant offered these explanations to the trial court in an effort to persuade the trial court to allow defendant to serve his underlying sentences concurrently, rather than consecutively as the initial sentencing trial court had ordered. In accepting defendant's admission to a revocable probation violation, the trial court revoked defendant's probation, denied defendant's request that his sentences be served concurrently, and activated defendant's sentences as originally determined. Defendant verbally noticed his appeal.
¶ 7 The Court of Appeals issued a divided opinion in which the majority held that the State had met its burden of proof to show that defendant willfully violated a revocable condition of probation and that the trial court's revocation of defendant's probation was not an abuse of discretion. State v. Crompton , 270 N.C. App. 439, 448–49, 842 S.E.2d 106 (2020). The dissenting opinion considered the absconding allegation in the probation violation reports to allege only violations of regular conditions of probation found in N.C.G.S. § 15A-1343(b)(3), and therefore the absconding allegation itself was insufficient here to allege a revocable condition of probation under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1343(b)(3a), pursuant to the Court of Appeals decision in State v. Williams , 243 N.C. App. 198, 199–200, 776 S.E.2d 741 (2015). Crompton, 270 N.C. App. at 454–55, 842 S.E.2d 106 (McGee, C.J. dissenting). Even assuming that the alleged facts contained within the claimed absconding violation were not limited to violations of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1343(b)(3), the dissent deemed that the allegations "taken together[ ] still do not establish a violation of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1343(b)(3a) [ ] because they do not adequately allege willfulness by [d]efendant" as required by the Court of Appeals opinion in State v. Melton , 258 N.C. App. 134, 139, 811 S.E.2d 678 (2018). Id. at 455, 842 S.E.2d 106. The dissent reasoned that, although defendant admitted to the absconding violation as alleged and Officer Harris testified to exhausting all methods of contact with defendant, nonetheless the allegations in the probation violation report failed to charge that defendant actually knew that his supervising officer was trying to contact him. Id. Consequently, the dissenting view would have decided that "the State's evidence was insufficient to support a finding of absconding." Id. at 457, 842 S.E.2d 106. Defendant appealed to this Court as a matter of right based upon the issues raised in the dissent.
¶ 8 The trial court's decision to revoke a defendant's term of probation pursuant to a valid probation...
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...only possible conclusion from the majority's silence on [ Spivey and Farmer ] is that these cases remain good law." State v. Crompton , 380 N.C. 220, 868 S.E.2d 48, 2022-NCSC-14, ¶ 26 (Earls, J., dissenting).¶ 97 In Wilkerson , the defendant was incarcerated for over three years following h......
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