State v. Tindall

742 S.E.2d 272, 227 N.C. App. 183, 2013 WL 1876774, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 466
Court of Appeals of North Carolina·Decided May 7, 2013·No. No. COA12-1145·Published·Cited by 14 cases

Opinion

CALABRIA, Judge.

[184] Holly Dawn Tindall (“defendant”) appeals from judgments entered upon revocation of her probation. We reverse and remand.

On 21 November 2011, defendant pled guilty to forgery of an instrument, uttering a forged instrument, obtaining property by false pretenses, obtaining controlled substance (“CS”) by fraud, financial transaction card theft, three counts of financial transaction card fraud, and three counts of larceny. The court found, and defendant admitted to, an aggravating factor, namely that defendant committed the offenses while on pretrial release from another charge. The trial court sentenced defendant to a minimum of eight and a maximum of ten months for one count of larceny. Defendant was placed on supervised probation for sixty months. The trial court consolidated defendant’s sentences for obtaining CS by fraud, three counts of financial card fraud, financial card theft, forgery of an instrument, uttering a forged instrument and two counts of larceny. Defendant was sentenced to a minimum of eight and a maximum of ten months. For obtaining property by false pretenses, defendant was sentenced to a minimum of eight and a maximum of ten months. Defendant was ordered to comply with the conditions set forth in the previous sentence. All sentences were suspended, were to run consecutively and were to be served in the North Carolina Department of Correction. One of the conditions of defendant’s probation was that she was to comply with a substance abuse program at a facility called Crystal Lake.

Defendant was admitted to the Crystal Lake treatment facility on 28 January 2012. Defendant’s probation officer (“PO”) was contacted in February, after defendant was caught “partying” with other residents. Defendant admitted to snorting ten lines of cocaine. At the time defendant was arrested, the PO found a diet pill on defendant’s person. On 23 February 2012, the PO filed violation reports indicating that defendant had violated her probation by using illegal drugs because she “admitted to using 10 lines of cocaine while at Cosa Works treatment center on 19 February 2012” and by failing to “complete Crystal Lakes treatment program” as ordered.

At the probation revocation hearing in Moore County Superior Court, defendant’s PO testified that defendant had been “arrested.” The trial court found that defendant “did unlawfully willfully without legal justification violate [] the terms and conditions of her probation as alleged in the violation report, and the [c]ourt specifically [found] that she [] committed a subsequent offense while on probation.” The trial court then activated defendant’s suspended sentences, with modifications. The trial court sentenced defendant to three consecutive sentences of a [185] minimum of six and a maximum of eight months in the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction. Defendant appeals.

Defendant contends that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter judgments revoking defendant’s probation on the basis of a probation violation that was not alleged in the violation report and of which she was not given notice. We agree.

Pursuant to statute, “probation may be reduced, terminated, continued, extended, modified, or revoked....” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1344(a) (2011). The Justice Reinvestment Act of 2011 (“the Act”) amended the statutes governing probation revocation. See State v. Jones, _ N.C. App. _, _, 736 S.E.2d 634, 637 (2013). The Act amended subsection (a) of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1344 by adding the following provision: “[t]he court may only revoke probation for a violation of a condition of probation under G.S. 15A-1343(b)(l)” or N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b) (3a), except as provided in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1344(d2). Id. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b)(l) imposes a “commit no criminal offense” condition and N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b)(3a) provides that a probationer cannot “abscond, by willfully avoiding supervision or by willfully making the defendant’s whereabouts unknown to the supervising probation .officer.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b)(l); (3a) (2011). In addition, the Act added a subsection entitled “Confinement in Response to Violation” (“CRV”) which provides that the court may revoke probation for violations other than N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b)(l) or N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1343(b)(3a), only if the probationer has already served two periods of confinement in response to a violation under this subsection. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1344(d2) (2011); Jones, _ N.C. App. at _, 736 S.E.2d at 637. “Accordingly, under these revised provisions, the trial court ‘may only revoke probation if the defendant commits a criminal offense or absconds[,]’ and may ‘impose a ninety-day period of confinement for a probation violation other than committing a criminal offense or absconding.’ ” Jones,_N.C. App. at_, 736 S.E.2d at 637.

Prior to revocation of probation, the court must hold a hearing, “unless the probationer waives the hearing....” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1345(e) (2011). “The State must give the probationer notice of the [probation revocation] hearing and its purpose, including a statement of the violations alleged.” Id. “The notice, unless waived by the probationer, must be given at least 24 hours before the hearing.” Id. “The purpose of the notice mandated by this section is to allow the defendant to prepare a defense and to protect the defendant from a second probation violation hearing for the same act.” State v. Hubbard, 198 N.C. App. 154, 158, 678 S.E.2d 390, 393 (2009).

[186] This Court has reversed revocation of a defendant’s probation when the revocation was based, in part, on a violation for which defendant had no notice. State v. Cunningham, 63 N.C. App. 470, 475, 305 S.E.2d 193, 196-97 (1983). In Cunningham, the violation reports alleged that the defendant played loud music which disturbed his neighbors and removed their personal property, but “the State sought to prove additional conduct... that defendant trespassed upon and damaged real and personal property....” Id. at 475, 305 S.E.2d at 196. Since the defendant did not receive notice of the additional conduct alleging a violation based on trespass and damage to property, the Court held that the trial court erred by revoking the defendant’s suspended sentence based on alleged violations that were not included in the violation report. Id. at 475, 305 S.E.2d at 196-97.

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State v. Tindall, 742 S.E.2d 272, 227 N.C. App. 183, 2013 WL 1876774, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 466 (N.C. Ct. App. 2013).

742 S.E.2d 272 (State v. Tindall) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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