In other opinions issued this morning, the N.C. Court of Appeals:

  • upheld a Guilford County hate crime conviction. A jury cleared defendant David John Brown of the charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, but the same jury convicted him of “assault with a deadly weapon with ethnic animosity.”
  • upheld a trial court’s ruling in favor of Zebulon in the town’s fight with a former police officer over his dismissal.
  • upheld a trial court’s ruling in favor of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources in a dispute over $9,500 linked to water quality permits.
  • offered a split decision in a dispute between the N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety and a company targeted for $24,000 in civil penalties linked to a trucking permit dispute. The appellate judges upheld the lower court’s ruling against the state in relation to the civil penalties, but the appellate panel threw out part of the lower-court ruling that would have forced the state to pay attorney’s fees.