NC officer was fired for letting suspect smoke pot. He just won a partial court victory
A former Durham police sergeant won a partial victory in the NC appeals court Tuesday after being fired for letting an armed suspect smoke marijuana if he agreed to surrender peacefully.
In June 2016, Julius Smoot barricaded himself in an apartment and gave Durham police a grim warning: Let him see his wife and son in 10 minutes or he would shoot himself in the upstairs bedroom.
The officers, there to serve an arrest warrant, called the only hostage negotiator on-duty — Sgt. Michael Mole’, who arrived in five minutes.
Mole’ spent two hours talking to Smoot, then 29, trying to keep him alive. During that time, the suspect’s gun fired accidentally.
Finally, Smoot told Mole’ he wanted to smoke a marijuana cigarette, and the officer agreed as long as Smoot gave up.
Smoot, while in handcuffs, smoked the “blunt” he kept behind his ear — which ultimately got Mole’ fired from the Durham Police Department.
Mole’ sued Durham shortly afterward. The trial court dismissed his case, but the details of his encounter with Smoot are spelled out in Tuesday’s decision from the NC Court of Appeals, which ruled partially in his favor.
In his original complaint, Mole’ argued Durham violated his rights to “the fruits of his labor,” which are guaranteed by the NC Constitution.
In its Tuesday decision, the three-judge group ruled that a lower court erred by dismissing Mole’s complaint on that issue. The opinion, written by Judge Lucy Inman, noted that Mole’ received only a day’s notice of his disciplinary hearing rather than the minimum three guaranteed by city policy.
“We do not hold that Durham could not terminate Sergeant Mole’ based on the conduct at issue, or that Durham could not terminate Sergeant Mole’ without cause,” Inman wrote. “We only hold that Durham must follow its own disciplinary procedures — created to protect its legitimate governmental interest in treating city employees fairly.”
The ruling reverses the trial court’s order and sends the case back there, but Mole’s future remains uncertain beyond that. Appeals courts do not rule on the facts of a case but rather on whether the law has been followed.
“At this early stage of litigation, we do not address whether Sergeant Mole’ must be reinstated or what relief must be afforded to him should he prevail,” Inman wrote.
No one was injured during the standoff with Smoot on Chapel Hill Road.
After he surrendered, Smoot, then a registered sex offender, was charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and discharging a firearm within city limits, CBS 17 reported at the time. He was also served with more than a dozen warrants and jailed with bond set at $348,500.
In his original complaint, Mole’ also argued that he was denied due process because his continued employment under Durham’s policies counted as a “property right.”
He further asserted that he had been denied equal protection under law because other Durham officers were allowed to keep their jobs despite “more egregious” conduct.
The court rejected these arguments.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 1:11 PM.