Mecklenburg prosecutors pared down homicide backlog in 2015

Despite a jump in killings throughout 2015, Mecklenburg County enters the new year with a smaller backlog of homicide cases moving through the courts.

County prosecutors now have 79 active homicide cases, down from 146 when District Attorney Andrew Murray first took office five years ago. The backlog is 10 cases shorter than it was a year ago despite a 43 percent leap in murders across Mecklenburg County over the past 12 months.

The decrease – along with a trend that saw the average age of pending homicide cases drop by almost 20 percent in 2015 – also occurred despite one of the county’s three courtrooms reserved for felony cases being tied up with the five-week-long trial of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall “Wes” Kerrick, who was charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed black man. The case ended in a mistrial, and the charges were dropped.

Assistant District Attorney Bill Stetzer, head of Murray’s homicide team, said his prosecutors benefited from two years of reduced instances of violent crime to pare down the homicide backlog. When the surge of killings began in 2015 – 60 to date compared with 42 for all of last year – he says prosecutors and police adjusted their handling of the resulting caseload to compensate.

In 2014, Murray had emphasized whittling down the murder cases by importing prosecutors from other departments to get more pleas or verdicts. This year, the homicide team returned the favor. Stetzer’s group took 16 cases to trial, four of them involving rape or child sex offenses. Stetzer said prosecutors took pleas in about 40 other homicide cases.

In North Carolina, prosecutors control the court docket and the scheduling of hearings and trials. In 2016, with 15 scheduled court slots available, Stetzer says he has scheduled 24 defendants for trial and hopes to add up to six more.

At Murray’s request, the attorney general’s office handled the high-profile Kerrick case. Murray’s office accepted a plea agreement that sent Linny Barcliff to multiple life sentences for the August 2011 triple slaying on a 4-year-old girl and her parents. The child was believed to be hiding near her parents when she was stabbed to death.

Before his plea, Barcliff faced the death penalty in the case. Stetzer says no capital cases are scheduled for 2016.

Death-penalty cases take far longer to investigate, plan and prosecute. The trials alone can tie up personnel and court space for months. In the last five years, the DA’s office has reduced its death-penalty caseload from 16 to 1 – Colin Latta, 38, accused of a fatal Charlotte shooting in 2013. Latta has not entered a plea and his trial remains unscheduled.

Among the cases pending in 2016:

▪ Todd Boderick, 28, accused of the beating death of his infant daughter, is scheduled for trial in March. Boderick was to be tried last February, but the self-styled member of Moorish Nation has fired his four court-appointed attorneys and was given the right to defend himself. As of now, he still doesn’t have an attorney. In 2010, Boderick and his girlfriend were charged with felony child abuse of their then 7-week-old son, but the charges were dropped. If convicted, he faces life without parole.

▪ Raphael White, 31, accused of the shooting death state corrections officer Bias Easley, could be before a judge and jury by late February. One of White’s preliminary hearings was marred by a brawl between his brother and Easley’s. Prosecutors say Easley died following an argument with one of the White brothers.

▪ Emmanuel Rangel, 20, accused of four murders in Mecklenburg County last February. A month after his arrest, Rangel became the subject of a Capitol Hill debate when congressional Republicans discovered that he received protective immigration status despite an apparent gang background. He faces life without parole on each of the counts. He is scheduled for trial in October.

This story was originally published December 31, 2015 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Mecklenburg prosecutors pared down homicide backlog in 2015."