The Docket: No End in Sight

A three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals seemed likely to keep Jefferson Griffin’s legal challenge in state court—perhaps, in part, because the state Supreme Court tied their hands. 

Three months after Election Day, Griffin, a Republican Court of Appeals judge, has not conceded his apparent 734-vote loss to Democratic Justice Allison Riggs. Instead, he asked the state Supreme Court to throw out more than 65,000 ballots from early and absentee voters for three reasons—they had incomplete registration information, are overseas voters who never lived in North Carolina but are registered to vote here, or they are overseas and military voters exempt from the state’s photo ID requirement. 

After the State Board of Elections dismissed his protests in December, Griffin bypassed the state’s usual appeal process and went directly to the state Supreme Court. The State Board of Elections asked the federal courts to intervene, arguing that the legal disputes involved questions of federal law. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Meyer II, an appointee of President Donald Trump, rejected the state elections board’s request to move the case to federal court on January 6. In doing so, he closed the federal docket without giving the elections board a chance to appeal, which the board argued violated federal procedures. The next day, the state Supreme Court agreed to consider Griffin’s case. 

Two weeks later, on January 22, the court abruptly dismissed Griffin’s writ of prohibition, sending the case to Wake County’s superior court while keeping in place a stay preventing the elections board from certifying Riggs’ victory. Several of the Republican justices seemed willing to indulge Griffin’s complaints if the case came back to the court later this year. 

But the decision’s timing was curious. The parties hadn’t finished filing briefs in the case, and the ruling came five days before the Fourth Circuit was scheduled to hear arguments about whether to take the case back to federal court. 

At oral arguments Monday, Griffin’s attorney William Thompson argued that the state Supreme Court’s decision rendered the elections board’s appeal moot. Once the state Supreme Court acted, Thompson said, federal courts weren’t allowed to claw it back, even if they believed the district judge had messed up. Judges Paul Niemeyer and A. Marvin Quattlebaum, appointees of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively, seemed inclined to agree. Judge Toby Heytens, a nominee of President Joe Biden, appeared more skeptical, prompting heated exchanges with Thompson. 

Niemeyer repeatedly asked attorneys representing Riggs and the state elections board how federal courts could have jurisdiction over the case once the state Supreme Court dismissed Griffin’s writ of prohibition. 

Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway scheduled a hearing for February 7. Attorneys for Riggs and the state elections board urged the Fourth Circuit to decide whether the case belonged in federal court before then. 

“It’s important to not lose sight of the fact that Justice Riggs’ victory is the last uncertified race in this country, as we stand here today, because of the stay of certification in this case,” Samuel Hartzell, Riggs’ attorney, told the court Monday. 

It appears that the race will remain so for the foreseeable future.

—Michael Hewlett & Jeffrey Billman

Have any suggestions for improving this newsletter or stories we should look into? Email us at courts@theassemblync.com.

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Beg Your Pardon

It might seem like pardons have been flying almost as freely as Oprah Winfrey once bestowed cars on her talk show audiences.

Within hours of his inauguration last week, President Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon to all involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Joe Biden had pardoned his siblings and their spouses earlier that same day in the waning hours of his presidency, an unexpected finale in a series of pardons meant to block retribution Trump had promised to exact on his political foes. Biden also pardoned his son, Hunter, on December 1, prior to his scheduled sentencing for federal felony gun and tax convictions.

Roy Cooper also issued a flurry of pardons during his final weeks as governor and commuted the sentences of 15 people on death row to life without a possibility for parole (an issue we wrote about last month).

While some of the pardons were more controversial than others, questions swirled about why presidents and governors even have such power.

The state’s first pardon was granted in the late 1770s by Gov. Richard Caswell, an action commemorated earlier this month with a new historical marker in Tarboro.

The sign on N.C. 42 pays homage to the Gourd Patch Conspiracy, a failed 1777 uprising by a group of farmers who plotted to kidnap and kill Caswell and overthrow the state government. The state Department of Cultural and Natural Resources outlined the history in two recent posts. 

John Lewelling, a Martin County farmer, led the uprising over fear that the state Constitution of 1776 did not include a state religion.

Lewelling (whose name has also been spelled Llewellyn, Luellen and Lewellen) worried that this would lead to the weakening of Protestantism and religious values. With secret codes, hand gestures, and special sticks with three notches, he rallied farmers from Martin, Tyrrell, Pitt, and Bertie counties to meet in a pumpkin patch to hatch a plan.

In the summer of 1777, they enlisted a slave patroller to create a diversion when Caswell was set to visit Halifax, hoping to draw the militia away from the governor. But the slave patroller got cold feet and went to the authorities.

Some members of the secret society, whose membership had grown to 54, were arrested afterwards.

Despite the setbacks, remaining members kept plotting in the gourd patch, and later that summer, about 30 of them tried to seize a powder magazine in Tarboro. The local militia thwarted the attempt, leading to multiple arrests and charges. Lewelling was charged and convicted of high treason and sentenced to death in September of that year.

Amid quick calls for mercy, Caswell decided not too long afterward to grant the state’s first known pardon.

—Anne Blythe

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A Key Witness Recants

Last Wednesday, Jessicah Black sat in a Forsyth County courtroom, her face tear-stained, her voice raw, trying to rectify a lie she said she told nearly 23 years ago. 

She testified that she’d told the lie after Winston-Salem police detectives screamed at her for more than an hour until she gave them what they wanted—a statement that would seal the fates of five teenage boys she’d befriended.

Brothers Nathaniel Cauthen and Rayshawn Banner and their friends Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, and Dorrell Brayboy were accused of brutally beating Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of NBA star Chris Paul, in his East Winston-Salem home during an attempted robbery in November 2002. 

Winston-Salem police had narrowed their search to the five teenagers when the mother of one of them told police her son had been acting strangely since Jones’ death. Police pulled all five into separate interrogation rooms, where the boys later said they were coerced into giving false confessions. Four said police threatened them with the death penalty, even though North Carolina had eliminated it for juveniles in 1987.

There was no definitive physical evidence, including DNA or fingerprints, tying the boys to the crime scene, and their statements were inconsistent both with each other’s and with what physical evidence the police did have. The boys couldn’t agree on where they left Jones’ body, who participated in the beating, or what weapons were used. 

Black was a 16-year-old who had started hanging out with the boys a few months before Jones’ death. She became the state’s most critical witness in two trials—one in 2004 and another in 2005—that led to all five boys being convicted and sent to prison. Now she’s telling a different story.

A Lie’s Reckoning

Jessicah Black was the key witness in a case that sent five teenagers away for the 2002 murder of NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather, Nathaniel Jones. Now she’s trying to exonerate them.

—Michael Hewlett

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Around The State

Short-Term Rental Owners Steel Themselves for Long Recovery

Western N.C.’s vacation rental industry, a key component of the tourism economy, faces an uncertain future after Hurricane Helene.

The Reading Wars Go to College

Nearly everyone backs the latest research on teaching kids to read. Why did it take eight years to update curriculum?

Bringing the Border War Home

How one North Carolina sheriff helped shape the anti-immigration agenda that will define Donald Trump’s second term.