IN RE: B.R.H. Mecklenburg County
No. 02 J 849
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General
Donna D. Smith, for the State.
Brian Michael Aus for respondent-appellant.
CALABRIA, Judge.
B.R.H. (the “juvenile”) appeals from a Level 3 disposition and
commitment order entered upon revocation of his probation. We
affirm.
On 28 July 2004, the juvenile was adjudicated delinquent for
two counts of felonious breaking and entering. The court ordered
a Level 2 disposition and placed the juvenile on probation for
twelve months. Subsequently, the court counselor filed a motion
for review on 11 August 2004, alleging the juvenile violated the
conditions of his probation by leaving “his residence without just
cause or permission on the 8th, 9th, and 10th days of August 2004
with his whereabouts unknown.”
Since the juvenile was not transported to the hearing, it was
continued until 22 November 2004 when the juvenile admitted theprobation violation in the court counselor's motion. The
prosecutor informed the court that the juvenile was under
indictment for felonious breaking and entering, larceny, and “in
the meantime he has more charges for breaking and entering and
larceny and larceny of a firearm.” The juvenile's counsel asked
the court “to close this juvenile case” since the juvenile was
facing a prison term of “at least six to eight months” for his
criminal charges and would be “pull[ed] . . . out of the juvenile”
system upon his conviction. When the court explained that the
juvenile was “not going to get [the] services in the adult system
[that] he can get in the juvenile system[,]” his counsel responded,
“[h]e can go to school in the adult system.” The court noted that
“[i]t could be six months” before the juvenile's criminal charges
were resolved, during which time “he could be getting the benefit
of all those services in training school.” The juvenile's counsel
cast the court's proposal as “a duplication of . . . resources that
would be better served and applied to other juveniles.” When the
juvenile told the court that jail was “easier” than training
school, the court replied:
I think that [the juvenile] needs to
understand that there are consequences for the
choices that he makes, . . . and for me just
to close this case and say, [“]I'm not going
to give any consequences for this,[”] I don't
think it teaches him what he needs to learn.
I think that's number one. I think number
two, he wants to stay in the adult system
because it's easier . . . to be where he is
now than to be in training school and have to
do all the things that he'd have to do in
training school. And if he is convicted on
the adult charges and he gets active time,they will pull him out of training school and
they'll put him in the adult system.
But in the meantime he can still get the
services available to him in the juvenile
system, and there are consequences to him.
In order to “give [the juvenile] one more opportunity to try to get
. . . these services[,]” the court revoked his probation and
imposed a Level 3 disposition, ordering him “committed to [a] youth
development center for no less than 6 mo[nth]s not to exceed [his]
18th birthday.”
In his lone assignment of error, the juvenile claims the
district court failed to make sufficient findings of fact to
support its disposition of commitment to a youth development
center. He argues in his brief, however, that insufficient
evidence supported the district court's findings of fact. Since
the juvenile failed to assign error to any of the individual
findings, the juvenile has failed to preserve for appellate review
the issue of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the
district court's findings. See N.C. R. App. P. 10(a) (2004);
Koufman v. Koufman, 330 N.C. 93, 97, 408 S.E.2d 729, 731 (1991)
(saying, “Where no exception is taken to a finding of fact by the
trial court, the finding is presumed to be supported by competent
evidence and is binding on appeal.”). Similarly, we do not address
whether the court's findings of fact are sufficient to support its
disposition under the rule that assignments of error not argued on
appeal are abandoned. N.C. R. App. P. 28(b)(6) (2004) (saying,
“assignments of error . . . in support of which no reason orargument is stated or authority cited, will be taken as
abandoned.”).
Affirmed.
Judges WYNN and JACKSON concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).
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