IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NORTH CAROLINA No. COA19-876 Filed: 18 August 2020 Granville County, No. 18 CRS 050036 STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. DAVID LEMUS, Defendant, and 1st ATLANTIC SURETY COMPANY, Surety. Appeal by surety from order entered 11 June 2019 by Judge Becky Holt in Granville County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 17 March 2020. Tharrington Smith, LLP, by Stephen G. Rawson and Colin Shive, for appellee Granville County Board of Education. Ragsdale Liggett, PLLC, by Amie C. Sivon, Mary M. Webb, and Kimberly N. Dixon; and Hill Law, PLLC, by M. Brad Hill, for surety-appellant. DIETZ, Judge. In 2018, David Lemus was charged with a felony and jailed pending trial. The trial court conditioned Lemus’s pretrial release on the execution of a $100,000 secured bond. Two weeks later, Lemus and his surety, 1st Atlantic Surety Company, executed and filed a $100,000 bond, at which point the law required the State to immediately “effect the release” of Lemus. That did not happen. Instead, the State continued to detain Lemus under an agreement with federal immigration authorities until the federal government arrived, took custody of Lemus, and ultimately deported him to Mexico. STATE V. LEMUS Opinion of the Court After Lemus failed to appear at his state criminal trial (because the State chose to hand him over the federal government, which then deported him), the trial court forfeited Lemus’s $100,000 bond. Lemus’s surety moved for relief from the forfeiture judgment, arguing that the bond forfeiture statutes apply only if the “defendant was released” and Lemus was never released. The trial court rejected that petition for relief. We reverse. As explained below, under the plain language of the bail statutes, the trial court cannot enter a bond forfeiture unless, once the defendant has satisfied the conditions placed upon his release and there is no other basis in state law to retain custody of the defendant, the State sets the defendant free. This plain reading of the statute also enables the bond forfeiture laws to serve their intended purpose—to ensure that defendants report to court for their scheduled criminal proceedings. Here, the State knew Lemus would not be at his criminal trial because the State handed him over for deportation. The federal government even offered to coordinate with the State so that Lemus could be returned for trial, but the State declined. Interpreting the bail statutes to permit forfeiture in these circumstances conflicts with those statutes’ plain language, does nothing to serve their statutory purpose, and ultimately harms undocumented immigrants and their families—some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society—for absolutely no reason. -2- STATE V. LEMUS Opinion of the Court Accordingly, we hold that Lemus was never “released” as that term is used in the bail statutes, and the trial court had no statutory authority to enter a forfeiture. The trial court therefore abused its discretion when it declined to grant relief from that forfeiture. We reverse the trial court’s order and remand with ...
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Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals