NCLAWYERSWEEKLY.COM Part of the
VOLUME 34 NUMBER 10 ■
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MAY 9, 2022 ■ $8.50
‘Aggressor’ charge was reversible error ■ BY HEATH HAMACHER hhamacher@nclawyersweekly.com
Former public defender can sue federal judiciary ■ BY HEATH HAMACHER hhamacher@nclawyersweekly.com While sovereign immunity will limit her claims, a former federal public defender in North Carolina can pursue claims against the judiciary for failing to take immediate and effective action regarding her sexual harassment complaints, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on April 26. The ruling partly reverses a 2020 dismissal of the lawsuit by U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young. Because the 4th Circuit is a defendant, judges from other circuits
were designated to hear the case. The three-judge panel consisted of 10th Circuit Senior Circuit Judge Mary Beck Briscoe, 6th Circuit Senior Circuit Judge Ronald Gilman, and 8th Circuit Senior Circuit Judge Michael Melloy. In a nutshell, the court found that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution secures a federal judiciary employee’s right to be free from sexual harassment in the workplace. “We have no doubt, given the Supreme Court’s equivalent treatment of equal protection claims under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments,
that they should be extended to retaliation claims brought under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,” Briscoe wrote.
‘Quid pro quo’ harassment
Caryn Strickland, who worked for the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Western District of North Carolina, claims that she was harassed by her supervisor, the first assistant public defender, who “lavished” her with attention, created “shadowing” activities
A woman serving 19 years in prison for killing her paramour inside her bedroom will get a new trial after the North Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously determined that the trial court erred by instructing the jury on the aggressor doctrine. The aggressor doctrine denies an individual the benefit of a self-defense claim where the user of force is the aggressor in a situation, but even though the defendant here shot the deceased in the back and the pair had a history of vulgar arguments, evidence does not show that she was acting as the aggressor at the time that she fired the fatal shots. “In determining whether a selfdefense instruction should discuss the ‘aggressor’ doctrine, the relevant issue is simply whether the record contains evidence from which the jury could infer that the defendant was acting as an ‘aggressor’ at the time that he or she allegedly acted in selfdefense,” Judge April Wood wrote in the court’s April 19 opinion. “Where the trial court delivers an aggressor instruction ‘without supporting evidence, a new trial is required.”
‘Tumultuous’ times
Defendant Wendy Hicks met Caleb Adams, who was married, in September 2015 and the pair began an intimate and tumultuous relationship that lasted until Adams’ death on June 13, 2017. Hicks said that weeks
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COA: Extortion charge need not name alleged victim ■ BY HEATH HAMACHER hhamacher@nclawyersweekly.com A charging document in a juvenile action for extortion need not specifically identify the alleged victim for a trial court to have jurisdiction, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled in a matter of first impression. In its April 19 opinion, the appeals court unanimously held that a petition that “clearly apprised [the juvenile] of the conduct for which he was being charged with sufficient specificity to allow him to prepare an adequate defense” is not fatally defective.
“The requirement that a victim be named with any specificity at all stems not from a material consideration of the victim’s identity, but from a need to affirmatively prove that the defendant acted with the requisite felonious intent to take another’s property, not to take his own,” Judge Jefferson Griffin wrote for the court. In 2020, juvenile “Jeremy” obtained pictures of an eighth-grade classmate — “Cecilia” — from the girl’s cell phone. According to court documents, Jeremy and three other students, including Cecilia, were working on a class project when Jeremy took the girl’s phone to the bathroom for several moments. Sometime later, Cecilia told
school officials that three classmates were using a picture of her wearing only underwear and a bra to coerce her into buying them cookies from the cafeteria. She also said that Jeremy threatened to expose the photo if she didn’t do his math homework. After investigating, a school resource officer, believing that Jeremy and the other students had shared the photo on social media, filed a juvenile petition against Jeremy for extortion. That petition was ultimately dismissed but an identical petition resulted in the Surry County S e e JA D P a g e 5 ►
INSIDE BURNED BOOKS
SANCTIONS VACATED
COMMENTARY
Prison inmate may receive compensation for value of destroyed books.
Defamation, tortious interference claims not frivolous.
Has the legal system failed us? Not so PFAS-t!
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