RALEIGH - Before Demario Atwater had his probation revoked in a Wake County jail courtroom Thursday, his attorney made the same claim Atwater himself made to a judge in Granville County nearly nine months before his arrest in the March shooting death of Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president.

Wake County probation officers failed to contact Atwater for nearly a year, causing the defendant to think he was no longer on probation, said Rudy Renfer, Atwater's attorney.

In June, Atwater was equally up front about his lack of supervision to Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood in Granville County, when Atwater pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a felon as part of a plea deal.

According to a transcript of that June 28 hearing, Atwater told Hobgood he didn't think he was on probation anymore. The last time Atwater met with a Wake probation officer was in June 2005, he told Hobgood. A timeline established by probation officials after Carson's death shows Wake probation officers first assigned to his case in February 2005 left for other jobs, passing his file to other officers. As a result, more than a year passed without them even calling Atwater.

"I had like three probation officers, and they all left," Atwater told Hobgood.

When Wake probation officers did call, they "told me I was good, I was paying all my money," Atwater said in the transcript, referring to money he owed as part of his probation. Atwater was given an additional probation sentence by Hobgood.

Atwater's co-defendant in Carson's slaying, Laurence A. Lovette, 17, of Durham, was also placed on probation in January in Durham. But Lovette never met with his probation officer, who had not received training and faced a pending charge of driving while impaired of her own. Lovette, along with another man, also faces murder charges in the Jan. 18 shooting death of Duke University graduate student Abhijit Mahato.

On Thursday, Atwater, 21, learned he'll serve his 20-to-35-month prison sentence at Central Prison. His probation was revoked for two criminal cases, a 2005 Raleigh break-in and the 2007 Granville County weapon-possession charge.

Chapel Hill police and Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall have yet to reveal what they think links Atwater to Carson's killing. Carson, a popular and outgoing senior, was found shot to death March 5 in a Chapel Hill intersection near the university's campus.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour sealed several documents normally considered public information this week despite the objections of a lawyer representing the Herald-Sun of Durham.

Those documents could have shed some light on the investigation and described what led police to charge the two men in Carson's death. Baddour will likely revisit the sealing of the documents in late June.

On Monday, Woodall could announce whether he'll seek the death penalty against Atwater. Lovette is too young to face capital punishment because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned executions of those who committed the crime when they were younger than 18.

The lack of oversight of Atwater and Lovette by probation offices in Wake and Durham counties has sparked scrutiny of the statewide system, which appears hampered by heavy caseloads, frequent turnover and strained resources. The top three managers of the Wake County office were transferred while an internal countywide audit is conducted. Consultants with the National Institute of Corrections, which assessed the probation system in 2004 at the behest of state legislators, were called in to evaluate the program. But that review hasn't yet started, said Mike Stater, a Correction Department spokesman.

Next page >