State v. Waycaster

375 N.C. 232

846 S.E.2d 688

STATE of North Carolina

v.Jeffery Daniel WAYCASTER

No. 294A18

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed August 14, 2020

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Alexander Walton, Assistant Attorney General, for the State-appellee.

Dylan J.C. Buffum, for defendant-appellant.

DAVIS, Justice.

North Carolina's Habitual Felons Act references three ways by which the State may prove a defendant's prior convictions for the purpose of establishing that he is a habitual felon. The issue in this case is whether these methods of proof set out in the Act are exclusive. Because we conclude that the General Assembly intended for the means of proof mentioned in the Act to be nonexclusive, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals on that issue. Defendant also raised an additional issue relating to whether the trial court committed plain error by allowing the introduction of hearsay evidence during his trial. We now conclude that discretionary review of this additional issue was improvidently allowed.

Factual and Procedural Background

On 22 July 2014, defendant was sentenced to 30 months of supervised probation after pleading no contest to a charge of felony larceny. The terms of defendant's probation were modified on 3 September 2015, and pursuant to these modifications, he submitted to electronic monitoring and was required to wear an ankle monitor that tracked his location. In addition, although not under house arrest, defendant was required to comply with the curfew set by his primary probation officer, Matthew Plaster.

Defendant's electronic monitoring involved three different pieces of equipment: an ankle monitor worn by him, a Global Positioning System beacon that tracked the monitor, and a charger for the ankle monitor. The beacon was kept at defendant's home, and his probation officer would receive text messages or email alerts if he was not at home during his curfew. His probation officer would also receive notification if defendant tampered with his ankle monitor strap by cutting it off or otherwise trying to remove it. These alerts were sent from BI Total Monitoring (BI), a company with which the North Carolina Department of Public Safety contracted to install and maintain the monitoring equipment assigned to probationers such as defendant.

On 24 September 2015, the probation officer on duty, David Ashe, received a text message alert from BI notifying him that defendant had tampered with his ankle monitor strap. Officer Ashe attempted to call defendant but received no answer. After consulting the BI computer program to locate the ankle monitor, Officer Ashe went to the last known location of the monitor and discovered that it had been cut off and left in a ditch approximately eight feet from a road that was located a few miles away from defendant's home. Upon returning to his office, Officer Ashe verified that the monitor he had found in the ditch was, in fact, the one that had been given to defendant, and he submitted a report of the incident to Officer Plaster.

On 26 October 2015, defendant was indicted on charges of interfering with an electronic monitoring device and attaining the status of a habitual felon. A trial was held in Superior Court, McDowell County, beginning on 16 May 2017. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the charge of interfering with an electronic monitoring device on that same day. On the following day, the habitual felon phase of the trial began. The habitual felon indictment charged defendant with attaining habitual felon status based upon three prior felony convictions in McDowell County: (1) a 4 June 2001 conviction for felonious breaking and entering; (2) a 18 February 2010 conviction for felonious breaking and entering; and (3) a 22 July 2014 conviction for safecracking. At trial, the State admitted into evidence certified copies of the judgments for the latter two convictions in order to prove their existence.

With regard to the 4 June 2001 conviction, however, the prosecutor stated to the court that he had been informed by the Clerk of Court's office "that they didn't have the original" judgment associated with that conviction. In an effort to prove the existence of this conviction, the State called Melissa Adams, the Clerk of Court for McDowell County, as a witness. The State then introduced as an exhibit a computer printout from the Automated Criminal/Infraction System (ACIS). Adams testified that ACIS is a statewide computer system relied upon by courts and law enforcement agencies for accessing information regarding a defendant's criminal judgments, offense dates, and conviction dates. She further stated that the information contained in ACIS is taken from court records such as criminal judgments and manually entered into the database by an employee in the Clerk of Court's office. The ACIS printout offered by the State showed that defendant had been convicted of felonious breaking and entering on 4 June 2001, and Adams testified that the printout was a "certified true copy of the ACIS system."

When the State formally moved to introduce the ACIS printout into evidence as proof of defendant's 4 June 2001 felony conviction, defense counsel objected, arguing that the ACIS printout was not a true copy of the actual judgment but rather "simply a computer printout of data entered at some time in the past by someone of what purports to be a judgment." Defense counsel contended that the ACIS printout was therefore insufficient to prove defendant's 2001 conviction. The trial court overruled the objection, stating that "ACIS is a way in which the State can introduce true copies of judgments entered in the system, and it's admissible under the rules of evidence."

The jury found that defendant had attained the status of a habitual felon, and the trial court sentenced him to a term of imprisonment of 38 to 58 months. Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals.

Before the Court of Appeals, defendant made two arguments. First, he asserted that the trial court committed plain error by admitting hearsay evidence to establish that the ankle monitor found in the ditch belonged to him. Second, he contended that the trial court erred by allowing the ACIS printout to be introduced into evidence as proof of his 2001 conviction for the purpose of establishing that he was a habitual felon.

With regard to the first issue, defendant asserted that the trial court had plainly erred in allowing Officer Ashe to testify that he had verified through BI that the ankle monitor he found in the ditch belonged to defendant. Defendant contended that Officer Ashe's testimony constituted inadmissible hearsay because it was based entirely upon communications from BI and the State had failed to provide an adequate foundation to allow such information to be admitted pursuant to the business records exception to the hearsay rule set out in N.C.G.S. § 8C-1, Rule 803(6). Relying on its own precedent, the Court of Appeals rejected this argument and held that "hearsay statements based on ‘GPS tracking evidence and simultaneously prepared reports are admissible under the business records exception to the hearsay rule.’ " State v. Waycaster , 260 N.C. App. 684, 689, 818 S.E.2d 189, 193 (2018) (quoting State v. Gardner , 237 N.C. App. 496, 499, 769 S.E.2d 196, 198 (2014) ).

As for the second issue, defendant argued that the trial court had improperly allowed the ACIS printout to be used as proof of his 2001 conviction because N.C.G.S. § 14-7.4 contained the exclusive methods for proving prior convictions in a proceeding to determine habitual felon status. The Court of Appeals likewise rejected this argument based on its determination that the ACIS printout was "sufficient evidentiary proof of defendant's 4 June 2001 conviction under the Habitual Felon Act." Waycaster , 260 N.C. App. at 691, 818 S.E.2d at 195. The Court of Appeals stated that "ACIS ‘duplicates the physical records maintained by each Clerk and constitutes the collective compilation of all records individually entered by’ clerks of court." Id. (quoting LexisNexis Risk Data Mgmt. Inc. v. North Carolina Admin. Office of the Courts , 368 N.C. 180, 181, 775 S.E.2d 651, 652 (2015) ). The Court of Appeals concluded that the use of the ACIS printout to prove defendant's prior conviction did not violate N.C.G.S. § 14-7.4 due to the fact that the statute "is permissive and does not exclude methods of proof that are not specifically delineated in the Act." Id. at 692, 818 S.E.2d at 195.

In a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Murphy concurred in the majority's decision with respect to the first issue but dissented from the portion of the majority's opinion relating to the issue of whether the admission of the ACIS printout satisfied N.C.G.S. § 14-7.4. He expressed his belief that the State was required by the statute to prove defendant's prior convictions by stipulation or by introducing either the actual judgments of the convictions or certified copies thereof. Waycaster , 260 N.C. App. at 693, 818 S.E.2d at 196 (Murphy, J., dissenting). He further stated that, in his view, the State had failed to demonstrate the exercise of reasonable diligence in seeking to obtain the actual judgment relating to the 4 June 2001 conviction. Id. at 695–96, 818 S.E.2d at 197–98. For this reason, he expressed his belief that the ACIS printout did not qualify as admissible secondary evidence pursuant to Rule 1005 of the North Carolina Rules of Evidence. Id. at 695, 818 S.E.2d at 197 (citing N.C.G.S. § 8C-1, Rule 1005 (2019)).

On 11 September 2018, defendant appealed to this Court as of right on the basis of the dissent. Defendant also filed a petition for discretionary review in which he requested that this Court review the first issue decided by the Court of Appeals regarding the use of hearsay evidence to establish that the ankle monitor located in the ditch belonged to him. This Court allowed the petition for discretionary review on 30 ...