North Carolina Appeals Court Overturns County Deputy Convictions

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The North Carolina appeals court threw out the convictions of ex-Granville County Deputy Chad Coffey, who was convicted of fabricating training and qualification requirements for a former sheriff and former chief deputy.

In 2022, Coffey was facing 24 felony charges and was found guilty of 12 counts of obstructing justice. He was acquitted on 12 counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. He was convicted in Feb. 2022 after Coffey had already been in jail for five months.

In 2022, Coffey was sentenced to five to 15 months in prison. He likely would only have served six months with post-release supervision being required for the last nine months of his sentence. After having served his sentence, Coffey would have to complete an additional two years of probation.

This month, the state Court of Appeals decided that the indictments against Coffey failed to have all the necessary elements for a conviction.

Coffey was a certified firearms instructor who taught the annual lessons for law enforcement officials to meet the requirements for in-service firearm training.

Then-Granville County Sheriff Brindell Wilkins and Wilkins’ chief deputy had their scores falsified by Coffey when they did not show up for the mandated training. They had been certified for years in the 2010s before. This was shown in evidence at the trial.

Coffey admitted during the trial that he falsified the documents at Wilkins’ request but both he and his attorney state that he did not know that he was breaking the law. Coffey’s lawyers believed that the opposition was stretching in how they charged Coffey because he was under the belief that he was just following his supervisors’ orders.

Wilkins served 10 years as sheriff, an elected position in North Carolina. He continued in that role until 2019 when he was found guilty of obstruction of justice and the fraud of falsifying his gun-training documents. Wilkins appealed these convictions.

Wilkins pleaded guilty in Oct. 2023 to allegations of improper evidence practices. He urged someone to kill another former deputy. He is set to be released from prison Feb. 2025.

Judge Toby Hampson wrote the prevailing opinion of Coffey’s court case, and he wrote that obstruction of justice needs intent to be charged.

“The purpose of hindering or impeding a judicial or official proceeding or investigation or potential investigation, which might lead to a judicial or official proceeding,” he said.

The judge further stated that while the actions that Coffey did were wrong, there were no facts that showed that he knew what he was doing was wrong and that he had the intention of doing something unlawful.

Chief Judge Chris Dillon had a separate opinion in which he expressed that his actions may be able to be tried under “misconduct in public office” instead of what he was tried with in his trial. The misconduct in public office would be a common-law crime as opposed to the felony charges that he currently has.