Last Friday, the Supreme Court of North Carolina issued a number of opinions. One of the most notable was State v. Stubbs. In that case the Court addressed whether the Court of Appeals has subject matter jurisdiction over the State’s appeal from a trial court’s order granting a criminal defendant’s motion for appropriate relief. The disposition of the motion is emphasized because that fact was pertinent to the issue before the Court and ultimately resulted in the Court issuing a separate Order adopting an amendment to Rule 21(a)(1) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.
Rule 21(a)(1) previously stated:
Review of the Judgments and Orders of Trial Tribunals.
The writ of certiorari may be issued in appropriate
circumstances by either appellate court to permit review of
the judgments and orders of trial tribunals when the right
to prosecute an appeal has been lost by failure to take
timely action, or when no right of appeal from an
interlocutory order exists, or for review pursuant to
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1422(c)(3) of an order of the trial court
denying a motion for appropriate relief.(emphasis added).
The Defendant’s argument in Stubbs latched on to the inclusion of the word “denying” in the last sentence of the rule. He asserted that the plain wording of the rule meant that the State could not appeal a trial court order that granted a motion for appropriate relief, which was the result he had obtained in the trial court in his case. The Court rejected that argument and held that the State could appeal the trial court’s ruling and that the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to hear that appeal. The Court explained that the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals ultimately is established by the North Carolina Constitution and the General Assembly:
The jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals is established in the North Carolina
Constitution: “The Court of Appeals shall have such appellate jurisdiction as the
General Assembly may prescribe.” N.C. Const. art. IV, § 12(2). Following such
direction, the General Assembly has stated that the Court of Appeals “has jurisdiction
. . . to issue the prerogative writs, including mandamus, prohibition, certiorari, and
supersedeas, in aid of its own jurisdiction, or to supervise and control the proceedings
of any of the trial courts of the General Court of Justice.” N.C.G.S. § 7A-32(c) (2014).
Specifically with respect to motions for appropriate relief, the General Assembly has said that “[t]he court’s ruling on a motion for appropriate relief pursuant to G.S. 15A-1415 is subject to review…[i]f the time for appeal has expired and no appeal is pending, by writ of certiorari. N.C.G.S. §15A-1422(c)(3).
Because the State had filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court held that this statute applied, and further, “given that the General Assembly has placed no limiting language in subsection 15A-1422(c) regarding which party may appeal a ruling on an [motion for appropriate relief],” the Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to hear such an appeal even when the defendant has won relief in the trial court.
With respect to the issue of the apparent limiting language of Rule 21, the Court noted that Rule 1 of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure states that the rules “shall not be construed to extend or limit the jurisdiction of the courts of the appellate division as that is established by law.” N.C. R. App. P. 1(c). As explained by the Court in Stubbs, “[t]herefore, while Rule 21 might appear at first glance to limit the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals, the Rules cannot take away jurisdiction given to that court by the General Assembly in accordance with the North Carolina Constitution.” In other words, in the event of a possible inconsistency related to jurisdiction, the North Carolina Constitution and the General Assembly trump the language of the Rules of Appellate Procedure.
As mentioned above, in order to clear up any confusion created by the language of Rule 21, the Supreme Court also issued a separate contemporaneous Order adopting an amendment to the rule. That amendment clarifies the last sentence of Rule 21(a)(1) to reflect that the result in the trial court does not affect the jurisdiction of the appellate court. As such, amended Rule 21(a)(1), effective immediately, now reads as follows:
Review of the Judgments and Orders of Trial Tribunals.
The writ of certiorari may be issued in appropriate
circumstances by either appellate court to permit review of
the judgments and orders of trial tribunals when the right
to prosecute an appeal has been lost by failure to take
timely action, or when no right of appeal from an
interlocutory order exists, or for review pursuant to
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1422(c)(3) of an order of the trial court
ruling on a motion for appropriate relief.(emphasis added).
Thanks to friend of the blog Gary Beaver for pointing this Opinion and Amendment out to us when they were released on Friday.
-Patrick Kane