STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v
.
Wake County
No. 04 CRS 89804
KEVIN EDRAL DOUGLAS
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney
General Elizabeth Leonard McKay, for the State.
Robert W. Ewing, for defendant-appellant.
LEVINSON, Judge.
Kevin Douglas (defendant) appeals from judgment entered upon
his conviction of resisting, delaying, or obstructing a law
enforcement officer. We reverse.
In February 2004 a warrant was issued for defendant's for his
failure to appear in court on a misdemeanor charge unrelated to
this appeal. On 27 October 2004 Officers D. S. Taylor and C. P.
Penney of the Raleigh Police Department went to defendant's house
to serve him with the arrest warrant. They knocked on defendant's
door and explained their purpose. Defendant did not open the door,
and told the officers that they lacked jurisdiction to arrest him
because he had a “pro se” or “pro tem” order demonstrating their
lack of jurisdiction. After some time passed, defendant providedthe officers with part of his pro se complaint against the North
Carolina Supreme Court by dropping it out a second story window.
The complaint was a rambling assemblage of legal terminology that
had no relationship to the arrest warrant the officers were trying
to serve on defendant. Because defendant refused to come to the
door, the law enforcement officers called the Selective Enforcement
Unit for assistance. Members of their team broke down the door of
defendant's house, and brought him outside where he was arrested
without resistance. Defendant was taken to the Law Enforcement
Center and charged with violating N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-223 (2005),
which makes it a Class 2 Misdemeanor to “willfully and unlawfully
resist, delay or obstruct a public officer in discharging or
attempting to discharge a duty of his office[.]”
After a district court hearing wherein defendant was convicted
of resisting arrest, he appealed to superior court for a trial de
novo. The case was set for trial on 29 November 2005. The
defendant and his counsel were a few minutes late, and while
waiting, the trial court expressed surprise that there was to be a
jury trial on a resisting arrest charge. When the prosecutor
explained that the defendant had “typed up a document . . .
directed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina . . . and he said
that [the police] did not have jurisdiction to be at his house
because of this document[,]” the trial court asked if defendant had
been tested for “mental competence.” Defense counsel arrived, and
asked if the prosecutor and the court had been discussing defendant
“being sent off for a local evaluation.” The court told counselthat it had “asked about his mental health, because apparently he
didn't feel that these officers had jurisdiction over him[.]”
Defense counsel observed that she “would like to have him and most
of my clients evaluated” but offered the opinion that defendant
should not be evaluated because “he'd have to be a snail to not be
competent _ I mean according to [Dorothea] Dix [Hospital].”
Counsel also told the court that she didn't want to send defendant
to Dix Hospital because he had “a brain injury.”
When the defendant arrived, he told the trial court that on 27
October 2004 there had been “ten or twelve” officers at his house
to arrest him. He offered the explanation that he had “filed in
Federal Court accusing the [S]tate of corruption and racketeering”
and that the State “responded negatively to that accusation.”
Defendant said that the police had, on another occasion, arrived at
his house “within 12 hours of [his] filing in Federal Court.”
Therefore, when the police came to his house to serve the warrant,
the defendant “panicked” and started “getting all [his] papers
together” because he “assum[ed] [he'd] be shot” by the police. He
told the trial court that the arrest warrant was not legitimate,
and that people had broken into his house and “moved things around”
when he wasn't home. The colloquy between defendant and the court
continued:
THE COURT: . . . But you assumed the police
were going to come and shoot you?
THE DEFENDANT: Yes.
THE COURT: The Raleigh police?
THE DEFENDANT: Yes, because I didn't know. I
don't know who the Raleigh police are.
THE COURT: Just because of who you are?
THE DEFENDANT: Because I accused them of
corruption and racketeering, to the tune of
several hundred millions of dollars. And the
director of _
THE COURT: So you think these street officers
are going to come and execute you and _
THE DEFENDANT: It would only have to be one of
them, especially if there's 12 or 13 of them
being _
THE COURT: Whew.
. . . .
THE DEFENDANT: I didn't know. And the only
thing that they _ the only thing that I had
specifically heard that they yelled up to me
after I put the federal filing out [the
window] and said that they didn't have
jurisdiction because it was under supplemental
jurisdiction in Federal Court and that I had a
habeas corpus that was in process _ the only
thing I heard them saw was 'Well, come out and
we'll talk about it.'
. . . .
THE COURT: So you didn't come out.
THE DEFENDANT: . . . right when I was on the
phone with the news to make sure that there
were cameras there when I was being taken out
of the house _ I didn't want to be shot. . . .
THE COURT: You called the news people because
you wanted protection against the police
because you were afraid the police were going
to do something to you?
THE DEFENDANT: Yes.
The trial court tried several times to explain to defendant that
law enforcement officers do not make legal rulings on the validity
of a particular arrest warrant. The defendant responded:
THE DEFENDANT: I can tell you, as far as the
officers, if you have _ you have to have a
critical mass to be able to have that one
person that'll cross the line.
THE COURT: So you think that _
THE DEFENDANT: And I've been trying to deal
with this for eight months and [I've]
contact[ed] Senator John Edward's office. I
contacted the chairman of the Judiciary
Committee in the Senate. I've contacted _
THE COURT: Okay.
THE DEFENDANT: _ the director of the AOC and
contacted all kinds of people . . .
At this point the trial court met with the prosecutor and defense
counsel in chambers. Thereafter, the court told defendant that it
was willing to accept a guilty plea from defendant and assured him
that the court would enter a prayer for judgment continued (PJC),
and would not enter judgment. When the defendant refused this
offer and insisted on a jury trial, the trial court expressed
concerns about defendant's competency:
THE COURT: Mr. Douglas, I'm going to have to
send you to Dorothea Dix. You're taking all
the cards away from me. I'm trying to
persuade you to take a plea. I'm not going to
enter judgment. That's a freebie, but if you
don't want to do that, then I don't have any
other choice. There's not going to be a
trial. I guess I've made that choice. Either
you're going to go to Dix _
. . . .
THE COURT: . . . I'm not a medical guy. I'm
not a psychiatrist. So I'm not going to makethat judgment from here and then have some
court of appeals tell me he was crazy as a
loony tune. . . .
Defense counsel indicated that defendant would be willing to be
examined at Dix Hospital, and the trial court approved:
THE COURT: . . . I'm not about trying a man
who's not competent, and, in my judgment, when
I talk to him, he worries me. Some of the
stuff he's saying doesn't really add up for
me. . . . [I]f he wants a trial, then I'm
going to have to send him to be examined by
the people who say he's competent to stand
trial.
Defendant agreed to this plan after being assured that he could
have a jury trial if found competent. However, when court
reconvened the next day, defense counsel informed the trial court
that defendant had not realized that, before he could be examined
at Dix, he would have to be booked and spend a night or two in
jail. Defendant refused to be examined at Dix Hospital, because he
was afraid to be in police custody until the hospital had room for
him. The trial court then ruled that defendant could nonetheless
stand trial, but could not present a mental status defense.
At trial, the State presented evidence tending to show that
law enforcement officers had come to defendant's house to serve an
arrest warrant, and that defendant refused to come outside. After
the first day of trial, defendant asked the trial court to allow
him to subpoena the Raleigh Police Chief, and told the court that
“the most important” question he needed to ask her was “who from
the Federal Court called the police department to have the warrant
[issued].” The trial court denied defendant's motion, and tried
again to explain the limited scope of the issues before the jury: THE COURT: . . . it has nothing to do with the
offense. That's what I've been trying to
explain to you. [The jury] do[es]n't need to
hear all these constitutional arguments and
about conspiracies, because even if it were
true, the warrant would still be valid and
you're supposed to comply with it. . . .
Defendant testified that he had discovered an early aptitude
for computer studies, and had dropped out of high school to “start
working in New York City as a computer programmer.” A few weeks
after the events of September 11, 2001, he was beaten by police and
suffered a “major head injury.” When the police came to his house
on 27 October 2004 to serve an arrest warrant, he had been “working
on . . . the continuation of the lawsuit that was alleging that the
State of North Carolina was participating in corruption and
racketeering.” He panicked because he “had a previous situation
where when [he] filed in Federal Court . . . police showed up . .
. at six o'clock in the morning the next day.” He dropped a copy
of a document pertaining to his federal lawsuit out the window for
the law enforcement officers to read, and told them that he “had a
filing that was disputing the legitimacy of the warrant; that it
was supposed to be under the supplemental jurisdiction of the
United States District Court for the Fourth Circuit[.]”
Following the presentation of evidence, the jury found
defendant guilty. The trial court imposed a suspended sentence of
forty-five days incarceration, placed defendant on supervised
probation, and required him to serve ten days in jail. From this
judgment and conviction, defendant appeals.
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