State v. Bradley ( 2023 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA
No. 105A22
Filed 16 June 2023
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v.
CONNOR ORION BRADLEY
Appeal pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-30(2) from the decision of a divided panel of
the Court of Appeals, 282 N.C. App. 292 (2022), affirming the judgments entered on
29 July 2020 by Judge James M. Webb in Superior Court, Moore County. Heard in
the Supreme Court on 25 April 2023.
Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Robert C. Ennis, Assistant Attorney
General, for the State-appellee.
Stephen G. Driggers for defendant-appellant.
PER CURIAM.
In accordance with the highly deferential standard of review which governs an
appellate court’s consideration of a trial court’s probation revocation determination
and the relaxed evidentiary parameters which exist in probation revocation hearings,
we affirm the Court of Appeals opinion per curiam. In related fashion, we further note
that the out-of-court statements of the witness Amber Nicole Gooch1 provided
1The Court of Appeals opinion refers to “Amanda Gooch” as a result of the use of that
name by at least one witness who testified at defendant’s probation revocation hearing.
However, it appears to us that her name is, in fact, Amber Gooch.
STATE V. BRADLEY
Opinion of the Court
additional competent evidence from which the trial court could have derived its
findings of fact and subsequent conclusions of law. See State v. Jones, 382 N.C. 267,
272 (2022) (noting that the “[t]raditional rules of evidence do not apply in probation
violation hearings, and the trial court is permitted to use ‘substitutes for live
testimony, including affidavits, depositions, [and] documentary evidence,’ as well as
hearsay evidence” (alteration in original) (quoting Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778,
783 n.5 (1973))); see also State v. Murchison, 367 N.C. 461, 464 (2014). We modify the
Court of Appeals opinion only to the extent that the lower appellate court may have
mistakenly misconstrued Gooch’s statements as incompetent evidence upon which
the trial court could not and did not rely in entering the trial court’s findings. See
Bradley, 282 N.C. App. at 303 n.3 (Hampson, J., dissenting).2
AFFIRMED AS MODIFIED.
2 We acknowledge our receipt of a Motion for Judicial Notice filed by defense counsel
on 20 April 2023, asking this Court to take judicial notice of the judgments entered against
Gooch by the Superior Court, Moore County, on 19 March 2021. This Court can, of course,
consider any determination that has been reached within the state judicial system to the
extent that it is relevant to this Court’s proceedings. We have considered these judgments to
the extent that we have determined that they are relevant.
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