State v. Jones

371 N.C. 548

819 S.E.2d 340

STATE of North Carolina

v.Daryl Lamont JONES

No. 336A17

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed October 26, 2018

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Robert C. Montgomery, Senior Deputy Attorney General, and Daniel P. O’Brien, Special Deputy Attorney General, for the State.

Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by James R. Grant, Assistant Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellant.

MORGAN, Justice.

Defendant Daryl Lamont Jones was convicted of operating a motor vehicle when having an open container of alcohol in the passenger compartment while alcohol remained in his system. Defendant appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals which, in a divided opinion, found that the citation that charged the offense was legally sufficient to properly invoke the trial court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. State v. Jones , ––– N.C. App. ––––, ––––, 805 S.E.2d 701, 706 (2017). The dissenting judge did not believe that the citation met the statutory requirements for a valid criminal pleading in this State. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 712. Upon review, we conclude that the citation sufficiently and properly vested the trial court with subject-matter jurisdiction in this criminal proceeding and we thus affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

On 4 January 2015, while driving his vehicle in Wake County, defendant was cited for speeding and charged with operating a motor vehicle when having an open container of alcohol while alcohol remained in his system. Defendant was not charged with driving while impaired. The fill-in-the-blanks citation form utilized by the charging officer stated that the officer

has probable cause to believe that on ... Sunday, the 04 day of January, 2015 at 10:16PM in the county named above [defendant] did unlawfully and willfully

OPERATE A MOTOR VEHICLE ON A STREET OR HIGHWAY AT A SPEED OF 62 MPH IN A 45 MPH ZONE ( G.S. 20-141(J1) )

and on ... Sunday, the 04 day of January, 2015 at 10:16PM in the county named above [defendant] did unlawfully and willfully WITH AN OPEN CONTAINER OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE AFTER DRINKING ( G.S. 20-138.7(A) ) [.]

(Underlined language added by the officer to supply the pertinent information regarding the charged offenses in the blanks provided on the citation).

Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the open container charge on grounds that the citation was fatally defective such that the trial court lacked jurisdiction. The district court denied the motion and found defendant guilty as charged of both offenses. Defendant appealed his convictions to the Superior Court, Wake County. On 15 June 2016, a jury found defendant guilty of operating a vehicle while having an open container but found him not guilty of speeding. Defendant was sentenced on the same day to a twenty-day term of incarceration, which was suspended subject to six months of unsupervised probation. Defendant appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals.

In the Court of Appeals, defendant argued that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to try him for operating a motor vehicle while having an open container because the citation purporting to charge him with that offense failed to allege all of its essential elements. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 705. In a divided opinion filed on 5 September 2017, the Court of Appeals found no error. The majority of the court explained that N.C.G.S. § 15A-302(c) establishes requirements for citations like the one issued here. The majority further noted that the official commentary to Article 49, "Pleadings and Joinder," which is part of the Criminal Procedure Act embodied in Chapter 15A, states that a citation, which "constitutes the ‘pleading’ for misdemeanor criminal cases, .... ‘requires only that the crime be "identified." ’ " Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 703. The commentary further states that a defendant has the right under N.C.G.S. § 15A-922(c) to object to the description of the crime in a citation and "require a more formal pleading." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 704 (emphasis omitted) (quoting N.C.G.S. ch. 15A, art. 49 official cmt. (2015) ). Therefore, the majority concluded that "[t]o the extent there was a deficiency in the citation, [d]efendant had the right to object to trial on the citation by filing a motion" requiring that he "be charged in a new pleading," with any such objection being filed in the district court division. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 704 (quoting N.C.G.S. § 15A-922(c) (2015) ).

The Court of Appeals majority determined that the citation complied with N.C.G.S. § 15A-302(c) because the charging instrument "properly identified the crime of having an open container of alcohol in the car while alcohol remained in his system, charged by citing N.C.[G.S.] § 20-138.7(a) and stating [d]efendant had an open container of alcohol after drinking." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 705. The majority reiterated that

[b]ecause [d]efendant failed to file a motion pursuant to [N.C.G.S. §] 15A-922(c) [to object to the citation at the district court level], he was no longer in a position to assert his statutory right to object to trial on citation, or to the sufficiency of the allegations set forth in [N.C.G.S. §] 20-138.7(g).

Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 705.

The court’s majority went on to add that even assuming, arguendo , that defendant was not required to object to the contents of the citation, "the failure to comply with N.C.[G.S.] § 15A-924(a)(5) by neglecting to allege facts supporting every element of an offense in a citation is not a jurisdictional defect." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 705. Unlike the requirements for an indictment, the State constitution does not require "a citation charging a misdemeanor to allege each element as a prerequisite of the district court’s jurisdiction." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 705. As a result, "any failure of a law enforcement officer to include each element of the crime in a citation is not fatal to the district court’s jurisdiction." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 706. Furthermore, the majority found that "the record establishes that [d]efendant was apprised of the charge against him and would not be subject to double jeopardy." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 706.

The dissenting judge reasoned that the citation was defective due to its failure to allege facts that "would support the elements of the offense" with which defendant was charged. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 712 (Zachary, J., dissenting). She disagreed with the majority’s determination that defendant’s failure to object to the citation in the court of original jurisdiction—here, the district court—precluded his challenge to jurisdiction. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 707. The dissent noted that N.C.G.S. § 15A-1446(d) allows a defendant to assert errors on appellate review based upon the failure of a pleading "to state essential elements of an alleged violation as required by [N.C.]G.S. § 15A-924(a)(5)," even if no objection was made in the trial division because a challenge to subject-matter jurisdiction can be raised at any time. Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 707. The dissent noted that the majority opinion relied primarily on the language of N.C.G.S. § 15A-302, which describes the information that a valid citation must contain; however, the dissent distinguished between a citation used as a process, which serves as a directive that a person appear in court and answer a misdemeanor or infraction charge or charges, and a citation used as a criminal pleading, which must assert facts supporting every element of a criminal offense and the defendant’s commission thereof. Id. at ––––, ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 706, 708. The dissent concluded that the majority "fails to acknowledge this issue or to articulate a basis for applying the requirements for use of a citation as a form of process, rather than the specific statutory criteria for use of a citation as a criminal pleading." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 710.

For those reasons, the dissenting judge stated that she would hold that, "upon application of the plain language of the statutes governing criminal pleadings in North Carolina, the citation is invalid." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 707. The dissenting opinion included the following passage:

In sum, N.C.[G.S.] § 15A-921 expressly states that a citation may serve as the State’s pleading in a criminal case, and N.C.[G.S.] § 15A-924(a)(5) requires that every criminal pleading must contain facts supporting each of the elements of the criminal offense with which the defendant is charged. There do not appear to be any appellate cases holding that N.C.[G.S.] § 15A-924 does not apply to a citation used as the pleading in a criminal case. Under the plain language of these statutes, when a citation is used by the State as the pleading in a criminal case, it must—like any other criminal pleading—allege facts that support the elements of the offense with which the defendant is charged.

Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 709. The dissent opined that the citation "fail[ed] to allege that defendant operated a motor vehicle on a public road or highway, or even that he drove," or "that the open container of alcohol was in the passenger area of defendant’s car." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 709. Accordingly, the dissent concluded that "[t]he citation fails to allege facts that would support two of the three elements of the offense: that defendant drove on a public highway, or that he had an open container of alcohol in the passenger area of the car." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 709. The dissent concluded that, "[a]s a result, the citation did not comply with the requirements of N.C.[G.S.] § 15A-924 [governing contents of pleadings] and did not confer subject matter jurisdiction upon the trial court." Id. at ––––, 805 S.E.2d at 709.

II. Analysis

North Carolina General Statutes section 15A-921 states: "[T]he following may serve as pleadings of the State in criminal cases:

(1) Citation.

(2) Criminal summons.

(3) Warrant for arrest.

(4) Magistrate’s order ... after arrest without

...