Some NC speeders exploit this legal loophole, then return to the road and kill

North Carolina law calls for stiff penalties for those caught driving at extreme speeds. But tens of thousands of drivers each year are allowed to exploit a loophole in state law that enables them to dodge those consequences.

The loophole — known as the “improper-equipment plea” — allows drivers to avoid all license and insurance penalties by claiming without proof that their speedometers weren’t working properly. Prosecutors dole these out with regularity, an investigation by the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh found.

Most never become involved in fatal wrecks. But the newspapers found about 30 drivers who got improper-equipment deals over the past five years later became involved in accidents that killed or seriously injured others.

Here are some of them:

▪ Prosecutors allowed Caleb Capps, of Lincolnton, to plead to improper equipment in October 2019 after police charged him with driving 60 mph in a 35-mph zone in Gaston County. In a separate incident four months later, police charged him with driving 17 mph over the speed limit. In a plea bargain, Gaston County prosecutors reduced the charge to 9 mph over the speed limit. In March 2020, Capps, now 19, was again charged with speeding — this time going 88 mph in a 65-mph zone.

He was still awaiting the resolution of that last case when on Sept. 5, 2020, authorities said, he drove his Dodge down a two-lane road in Cleveland County at 85 mph. Capps tried to pass a tractor-trailer that was making a left turn in front of him, but instead ran into the truck, according to a State Highway Patrol report.

The crash killed a passenger in Capps’ car — Nathaniel Berrett, an artistic 16-year-old who loved woodworking and trout fishing. Capps has been charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle. He and his attorney wouldn’t comment because the case is still pending.

▪ Brandon Terrell Thomas was charged seven times from 2010 to 2019 with speeding 15 mph or more over the limit in Wayne, Greene and Johnston counties. Each time he was able to plead to a lesser charge of either going slower than 15 mph over the limit or, in three cases in Johnston, to having a faulty speedometer.

Last May, troopers say, Thomas was driving 70 mph in a 55-mph zone when he tried to pass a truck on a curve on Dragstrip Road south of Benson and hit a pickup head-on. A passenger in the pickup, 49-year-old Donald Eugene Moore, of Autryville, died nine days later. Troopers charged Thomas, who is 30 and now lives in Raleigh, with misdemeanor death by vehicle.

Reached by phone, Thomas wouldn’t talk to a reporter.

Asked about Thomas’ history of speeding, Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle said she doesn’t have enough prosecutors or other staff to review the driving records for the thousands of traffic cases that come through her office every year.

“Unless they’re getting tipped off by someone, or remembering a repeat speeder on their own, my (prosecutors) would have no way to know of anyone’s prior speeding record,” she said. “We just don’t have the resources.”

▪ Charlotte resident Roy Mewborn was charged with driving 55 mph in a 35-mph zone in November 2017. The following month, Mecklenburg prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to improper equipment.

Two months later, in February 2018, he was driving 65 mph on a 55-mph stretch of Interstate 77 in Charlotte, with alcohol in his system, when his car plowed into a vehicle that was stopped in the roadway, according to the Highway Patrol. The two occupants of the stopped car — 33-year-old Phillip Hayes Jr. and 32-year-old Jessica Pacatte — were killed in the crash.

Before his death, Hayes had launched a successful real estate investment business in Charlotte and had produced YouTube videos to help other budding entrepreneurs. His father, Phillip Hayes, Sr., questions whether speeding drivers will get the message they need to learn if they continue to get plea deals like the one Mewborn got in 2017.

“It gives them a license to continue doing what they’re doing,” he said. “... Somebody like this guy gets that plea deal and it can kind of mold his behavior.”

Mewborn, now 27, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2019 and sentenced to three years probation. He could not be reached for comment.

In August 2020, police charged Mewborn with speeding again, this time for driving 100 mph in a 55-mph zone in Stanly County. That charge is pending.

Charlotte Observer database reporter Gavin Off contributed.

This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 8:00 AM.