State v. Oglesby
| Decision Date | 20 July 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. COA20-336,COA20-336 |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. Jaamall Denaris OGLESBY, Defendant. |
| Court | North Carolina Court of Appeals |
Attorney General Joshua H. Stein, by Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Ennis, for the State.
Appellate Defender Glenn Gerding, by Assistant Appellate Defendant Jillian C. Katz, for the Defendant.
¶ 1 Jaamall Denaris Oglesby ("Defendant") appeals from the trial court's resentencing order, which was entered following a post-conviction motion for appropriate relief. The issues presented by this resentencing appeal are (1) whether the trial court erred in only resentencing Defendant on some (but not all) of his convictions; (2) whether Defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel at his resentencing hearing; and (3) whether the trial court violated the Eighth Amendment by resentencing Defendant to a de facto life without parole sentence, given that Defendant was a juvenile at the time of the offense. We conclude that the trial court committed no error.
¶ 2 On 7 September 2002, when Defendant was 16 years old, Defendant and several accomplices robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. The group then proceeded to rob a different store at gunpoint the following evening, 8 September 2002. On 10 September 2002, the group kidnapped a custodian, Scott Jester, from a restaurant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They drove down the Interstate with Jester for several miles, until Defendant instructed the driver to stop at an exit, where Defendant pushed Jester out of the car, ordered him to lay flat on the ground, and shot him three times in the back of the head.
¶ 3 On 7 July 2003, Defendant was indicted by a Forsyth County Grand Jury for first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and attempted armed robbery, in connection with the murder of Mr. Jester that occurred on 10 September 2002. On 3 November 2003, Defendant was also indicted for two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon in connection with the two convenience store robberies that occurred on 7 and 8 September 2002.
¶ 4 On 24 May 2004, Defendant pleaded guilty to the two armed robbery charges, but the trial court postponed sentencing on those charges until Defendant could be tried on the remaining three charges. Also on 24 May 2004, the trial court heard and ultimately denied Defendant's motion to suppress certain incriminating statements he had made to law enforcement officers during an interrogation.
¶ 5 Defendant's trial was held in May 2004 in Forsyth County Superior Court, Judge Catherine Eagles presiding. On 28 May 2004, the jury found Defendant guilty of first-degree murder (under the felony murder rule), first-degree kidnapping, and attempted robbery. The trial court sentenced Defendant to the following consecutive terms: (1) 95 to 123 months for one armed robbery charge; (2) 95 to 123 months for the second armed robbery charge; (3) life imprisonment without parole ("LWOP") for first-degree murder; (4) 29 to 44 months for kidnapping; and (5) 77 to 102 months for attempted armed robbery. Defendant appealed.
¶ 6 On 6 December 2005, this Court filed an opinion remanding the case in part for resentencing on the two armed robbery convictions (based on a Blakely error in failing to submit the aggravating factors to the jury), and arresting judgment on either the kidnapping or armed robbery conviction (based on a double jeopardy violation in convicting Defendant of both the predicate felony and felony murder). See State v. Oglesby , 174 N.C. App. 658, 622 S.E.2d 152 (2005), aff'd in part, vacated in part , 361 N.C. 550, 648 S.E.2d 819 (2007) ; Blakely v. Washington , 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004) ().
¶ 7 On 24 August 2007, our Supreme Court vacated in part this Court's decision and remanded for a resentencing on the armed robberies, after concluding that this Court applied an erroneous standard of review to evaluate the Blakely claim. See State v. Oglesby , 361 N.C. 550, 648 S.E.2d 819 (2007).
On 6 November 2007, this Court duly reconsidered Defendant's Blakely claims under the harmless error standard, and ultimately upheld the armed robbery sentences after determining that the failure to submit the aggravating factors to the jury was harmless error. See State v. Oglesby , 186 N.C. App. 681, 652 S.E.2d 71, 2007 WL 3256666 (unpublished), disc. review denied , 362 N.C. 478, 667 S.E.2d 234 (2008). In compliance with this Court's mandate, on remand the trial court consequently arrested judgment on Defendant's attempted robbery conviction (based on the double jeopardy violation).
¶ 8 On 9 April 2013, Defendant filed a motion for appropriate relief ("MAR") in Forsyth County Superior Court based on the newly-issued United States Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), which held that a juvenile offender may not be sentenced to mandatory LWOP. Defendant's MAR argued that, under Miller , his LWOP sentence violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because he was only 16 at the time of the offense. The State responded on 10 April 2015 to request a one-year stay, asserting that our courts had not yet determined whether Miller could apply retroactively in cases such as Defendant's. The trial court granted the requested one-year stay on 5 May 2015. Defendant filed an amended MAR on 31 August 2016, asserting that it had been declared in Montgomery v. Louisiana , 577 U.S. 190, 136 S.Ct. 718, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016), that Miller applied retroactively. The State responded on 7 November 2016, agreeing that Miller applied retroactively and that Defendant was entitled to a resentencing hearing. On 17 May 2017, Judge Richard S. Gottlieb entered an order allowing Defendant's amended MAR, and awarding him a resentencing hearing for the limited purpose of: (1) resentencing Defendant's LWOP murder sentence (in accord with Miller ); and (2) arresting judgment on either the kidnapping or attempted armed robbery sentence (in accord with this Court's earlier remand).
¶ 9 On 26 August 2019, a resentencing hearing—the hearing at issue in this case—was held in Forsyth County Superior Court, Judge William A. Wood presiding. The trial court was tasked with resentencing Defendant on his murder, kidnapping, and attempted armed robbery convictions, in light of Miller and N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1340.19B ().
¶ 10 The parties agreed that, because Defendant's murder conviction was based solely on the felony murder rule, the trial court was statutorily obligated to sentence Defendant to life (with the possibility of parole after 25 years) for the murder conviction. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1340.19B(a) (2019) (); id. § 15A-1340.19A ().
¶ 11 In contrast, the main point of contention during the resentencing hearing was whether Defendant's murder sentence should run concurrently with his kidnapping sentence—as opposed to keeping the two sentences consecutive. Defendant's trial counsel argued that the kidnapping sentence should run concurrently with the murder sentence "based upon the [mitigating] factors that Miller put forth for a judge to consider[.]"1 Namely, defense counsel presented evidence that Defendant was 16 years old at the time of the crime; was interrogated by the police for 26 hours (without a parent or guardian present) before confessing; had an IQ of 81 (in the borderline-impairment range); was evaluated for intellectual capacity to proceed prior to his trial; and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but was not receiving medication or treatment at the time of trial. Defense counsel also stated that Defendant's LWOP sentence made him ineligible to participate in prison educational programs, and that Defendant was engaging in self-improvement in prison by developing a program to assist at-risk youth.
¶ 12 The trial court then requested clarification on whether the statute permitted this type of concurrent sentencing, asking counsel whether there was "any authority under § 15A-1340.19B ... that permits the Court to modify the order in which the sentence is run, as opposed to modifying the 25 to life?" Defense counsel responded that concurrent sentences were permitted under Miller because the kidnapping arose from the same series of transactions that resulted in the felony murder.
¶ 13 In response, the State argued that the kidnapping and murder sentences should remain consecutive, due to the serious nature of the crime and due to Defendant's numerous, repeated infractions while in prison. These prison infractions ran from 2008 through February 2019, and included offenses such as "weapon possession," "involvement with a gang," "assault on a staff with a weapon," "involvement with a gang," and "active rioter." The State noted that some infractions had even occurred during the pendency of Defendant's MAR, asserting that this demonstrated that Defendant had the opportunity to reform but chose not to, and that Defendant was "not someone who should get the benefit of these sentences running together."
¶ 14 With regard to the two armed robbery convictions, defense counsel described these convictions as "two other consecutive sentences from matters that are not before this Court[,]" further stating that the murder and kidnapping convictions were "the only two sentences that are at issue before the Court today." The trial court sought to...
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State v. Oglesby
...by counsel's failure to request that all his sentences be run concurrently. State v. Oglesby , 278 N.C. App. 564, 2021-NCCOA-354, ¶ 52, 862 S.E.2d 225.¶ 3 We agree with the majority below that, under the circumstances of this case, Oglesby cannot show prejudice because "the [resentencing] c......