SMITHFIELD -- Attorneys for the drunken driving suspects whose charges were illegally dismissed called the district attorney's move to reactivate the cases unconstitutional and political.
Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle filed a motion Wednesday asking a judge to strike the dismissals on the grounds that they were issued improperly.
Defense attorneys for the roughly 30 people affected argued in turn that Doyle's motion wasn't legal, given that the defendants weren't given adequate notice of the hearing Thursday morning and that they weren't responsible for the illegal dismissals. Five attorneys and a former prosecutor were convicted earlier this year after the scandal.
"Just telling people to come to court [without proper notice] hearkens back to totalitarian dictators," said attorney Bob Denning, representing members of the Johnston County Bar Association present at the hearing. He said he thinks the move is political, given that Doyle is up for reelection in November.
Assistant district attorney Whitney Hendrix said the defendants didn't need to be notified of Thursday's hearing because it didn't involve new charges against them. Also, she said many of the defendants have moved or changed attorneys and were difficult to find.
Doyle's move doesn't affect all the illegally dismissed driving-while-impaired charges. She said she only plans to reactivate the cases that were dismissed with forms signed by prosecutor Cindy Jaeger after she left office.
"Ms. Jaeger had no authority at all to dismiss these cases when the forms were entered," Doyle told a judge Thursday.
But attorney Frank Wood said the two-year statute of limitations has run out for one of his clients, who was charged in 2006.
That client, John Chamber, said he's done everything right to address his charges and shouldn't have to deal with the case again four years later. He was battling alcoholism at the time of the charges, he said, but he's now been sober for a year.
"This is going back and reopening something that I thought was behind me," Chamber said.
The judge reviewing Doyle's motion said he needed time to review the laws and would determine within a day or two whether the cases can be reactivated.
