The Docket: Eyes On the Court of Appeals

Last month, Allison Riggs described Democrats’ four-year plan to retake the Republican-led state Supreme Court as a game of dominoes. Riggs’ effort this year to keep her seat on the bench is the first domino; without her, there’d be just one Democrat left on the state’s highest court.

Democrats are also fighting to reverse the trend in the North Carolina Court of Appeals races, where three of 15 seats are up for election this fall. Republicans currently hold an 11-4 majority on the state’s intermediate appellate court, where most appeals from local court cases are heard. 

Two incumbents, one Democrat and one Republican, are vying to keep their seats, while a Republican and Democrat are challenging each other for a third open seat. If Democrats win all three seats this November, the Republican majority shrinks to 9-6. 

Michael Hewlett tells you what you need to know about those three races.

Eyes On the Court of Appeals Races

In 2020, Republicans won four seats on the N.C. Court of Appeals, giving them an 11-4 advantage. This year, another three seats are up.

Court of Appeals judges serve eight-year terms and decide cases in three-judge panels. This election is coming during a growing trend of increased polarization of state appellate courts. That has only been exacerbated with the General Assembly’s decision to make nonpartisan statewide judicial races partisan, starting in 2018. 

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

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Questions About a Disturbing Death

Javion Magee just wanted to drive, his father, Kori Magee, told reporters at a news conference last week in front of the Vance County courthouse. 

Javion, 21, had said he wanted to become a truck driver, just like his father. 

“He was one of the first people to come and say, ‘Dad, I’m about to go drive,’” he said. “I was like, ‘wow, what makes you want to do that,’ and he said, ‘I just want to do it. I want to put in my work.’” 

On September 11, his son’s body was found sitting at the base of a tree with blue rope around his neck in a wooded area in Henderson, N.C. Javion had driven from Chicago to drop off a load at a Walmart Distribution Center.  Surveillance cameras showed Magee buying blue rope at a Walmart store just after 6 p.m. on September 10. 

A video posted by a woman who said she was his cousin prompted speculation that Javion, who was Black, had been lynched, and that the sheriff’s office had tried to block the family from seeing his body. Sheriff Curtis Brame, who is also Black, quickly said it wasn’t a lynching and that preliminary autopsy results indicated that Javion might have taken his own life.

Lee Merrit and Harry Daniels, attorneys who represent Javion’s family, decried the sheriff’s office for jumping to that conclusion without a proper investigation. 

“A 21-year-old who is working, gainfully employed, doesn’t come to rural North Carolina and say, ‘You know what? I’m going to end it right here.’ Doesn’t make sense,” Daniels said. 

Javion also was planning to head to Houston, Texas, before coming back to Chicago to see some cousins, the attorneys said. Javion had no history of depression and no indications that he had suicidal thoughts, they said. 

Merrit and Daniels said the family will seek an independent autopsy. Meanwhile, the sheriff’s office released a detailed timeline of Javion’s movements in the hours before he was found dead. 

In asking for a thorough investigation into his death, attorneys for the family drew comparisons to the lynching death of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and Edward “Red” Roach in Roxboro in 1920.

The questions about Javion Magee’s death also echo those around the 2014 death of Lennon Lacy, a Black 17-year-old West Bladen High School student who was found dead hanging from a swing set by two belts.

Law enforcement officers quickly labeled it a suicide, but the teen’s family and state NAACP leaders raised concerns about that narrative and what they described as an investigation that lacked thoroughness.

The FBI opened an investigation, and announced in 2016 that there was “no evidence to suggest that Lacy’s death was a homicide.”

—Michael Hewlett and Anne Blythe

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Late-Breaking Election Fights

CNN’s report on comments Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson allegedly made on a pornographic website has dominated political news since late last week.

But on the same day that news broke, a Wake County Superior Court judge denied a request from the N.C. Republican Party and the Republican National Committee to block UNC-Chapel Hill students from using digital IDs to vote.

In his ruling, Judge Keith Gregory said state law does not bar digital IDs, according to Courthouse News Service. 

The Democratic majority on the state Board of Elections approved the use of the digital IDs on August 20 after Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell told them they met all of the state requirements. It was the first time the board approved digital IDs for voting.

In the lawsuit filed September 10 against both the board and Brinson Bell, the Republicans’ counsel argued the General Assembly did not “describe or indirectly permit the use of electronic forms of photo identification ‘to confirm the person presenting to vote is the registered voter on the voter registration records.'” They also argued that precinct officials might have difficulty examining electronic IDs on small screens, or if there were issues with the internet.

It’s uncertain whether the state GOP or national committee will appeal.

Most voters use their driver’s licenses, but many students use their digital student IDs as their main form of identification.

Absentee voting began late last week in North Carolina after ballots went out to military and overseas voters. In a video press conference with reporters Monday morning, Brinson Bell said 102 ballots from overseas and military voters had already been returned.

The digital ID lawsuit is one of a flurry of recent challenges: 

• The state GOP and National Republican Committee also sued the state board in late August, alleging it had failed to follow a state law that went into effect July 1 requiring them to cross-check voter rolls with documents about people who have been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens. Elections officials disputed the claims  and asked the RNC to rescind its press release.
• The next day, the same parties filed another lawsuit against the state board accusing it of failing to verify the identity of 225,000 registered voters who used registration forms that did not clarify that they had to provide a driver’s license or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
• On August 28, the conservative legal group United Sovereign Americans filed a lawsuit accusing the state board of failing to “verify the identity and eligibility of at least 1,122,761 facially invalid voter registrants.” 
• On September 3, the state and national GOP joined with voter Virginia Wassenburg to sue the state board over the way that absentee ballots are counted.

While Republicans argue the suits are necessary to ensure confidence in elections, others contend they’re more about sowing doubt and distrust in electoral processes.

—Anne Blythe

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