STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v. Surry County
No. 03-CRS-51607-09
DONALD LEE TRAVIS 03-CRS-51611
03-CRS-4392
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General
Brian C. Wilks, for the State.
Don Willey, for defendant-appellant.
MARTIN, Chief Judge.
Defendant was found guilty of possession with intent to sell
cocaine, sale or delivery of cocaine, and two counts of conspiracy
to sell or deliver cocaine. After entry of the jury verdicts, he
pled guilty to habitual felon status. On the prior record level
worksheet the court determined that defendant had six prior record
level points, thereby placing him within prior record level III.
The court consolidated all of the offenses into one judgment and
sentenced defendant to an active term within the presumptive range
of a minimum of 116 months and a maximum of 149 months.
Defendant assigns as error the trial court's finding that he
had a prior record level of III. He argues the court erred byallowing one of two convictions entered during the same week of
court to be used to establish habitual felon status and by allowing
the other conviction to be used in the calculation of prior record
level points.
Defendant acknowledges that in State v. Truesdale, 123 N.C.
App. 639, 642, 473 S.E.2d 670, 672 (1996), this Court held that
when two convictions are entered during the same week of court, one
of the convictions may be used to establish habitual felon status
while the other conviction may be used to establish the defendant's
prior record level points. Defendant argues Truesdale is
inapplicable to the case at bar because the offenses in this case
were committed prior to defendant's eighteenth birthday. He
submits that N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-7.1 prohibits the use of offenses
committed prior to the time a defendant reaches the age of eighteen
as constituting more than one felony. This statute provides, in
pertinent part, that [f]or the purposes of this Article, felonies
committed before a person attains the age of 18 years shall not
constitute more than one felony. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-7.1 (2003).
By its own express words, the application of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-
7.1 is limited to sentencing for habitual felon purposes only. We
can find nothing in the Structured Sentencing Act which prohibits
consideration of a conviction of an offense committed prior to the
offender's eighteenth birthday. We conclude defendant's attempted
distinction is not significant, and hold Truesdale is controlling.
Thus, we affirm the court's allocation of prior record level points
to one of the two convictions. We note that the judgment contains an evident clerical error.
Judge Massey signed the prior record level worksheet finding that
defendant had six prior record level points and that his prior
record level is III. In open court Judge Massey found the same
number of prior record level points and the same prior record
level. However, the judgment in the record on appeal states that
the number of prior record points is seventeen and that the prior
record level is V. This finding in the judgment is not consistent
with the sentence imposed by the court as the presumptive range of
minimum sentences for a Class V is 121-151 months, a range clearly
above the term imposed by the court. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-
1340.17(c). We therefore remand for correction of this clerical
error.
Remanded.
Judges McCULLOUGH and CALABRIA concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).
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