Title: State v. Graham
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 155PA20
State: north-carolina
Issuer: north-carolina Supreme Court
Date: October 29, 2021

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA 
2021-NCSC-125 
No. 155PA20 
Filed 29 October 2021 
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 
v. 
JOHN D. GRAHAM 
 
Discretionary review allowed pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-31 concerning the 
opinion of a divided panel of the Court of Appeals, 270 N.C. App. 478 (2020), finding 
no error in part and vacating and remanding in part an order entered on 13 December 
2016 by Judge Eric Levinson in Superior Court, Clay County1 and an order entered 
on 13 May 2019 by Judge Athena F. Brooks in Superior Court, Clay County. Heard 
in the Supreme Court on 26 April 2021. 
 
Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Benjamin O. Zellinger, Special Deputy 
Attorney General, for the State-appellee. 
 
Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by Daniel Shatz, Assistant Appellate 
Defender, for defendant-appellant. 
 
 
MORGAN, Justice. 
 
¶ 1 
 
This Court has limited its allowance of defendant’s petition for discretionary 
                                            
1 The Court of Appeals judge who rendered an opinion “concurring in part and 
dissenting in part” did not disagree with the lower appellate court’s majority opinion 
concerning the subject of our opinion here. See State v. Graham, 270 N.C. App. 478, 502 
(2020) (Bryant, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). As a result, this Court afforded 
discretionary review to the issue addressed herein so as to be able to consider it. 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
review to a single issue addressed by the Court of Appeals which defendant contends 
that the lower appellate court decided in error. Pertinent to our election to review 
this case is defendant’s argument that the Court of Appeals either improperly applied 
or disregarded the appropriate test for determining whether a defendant’s out-of-
state conviction may be counted as an elevated felony classification for purposes of 
sentencing in North Carolina trial courts as announced in State v. Sanders, 367 N.C. 
716 (2014). Because we believe that the Court of Appeals majority, with which the 
lower appellate court’s dissenting opinion agreed, properly applied the comparative 
elements test in affirming the trial court’s consideration of defendant’s conviction in 
the state of Georgia for statutory rape as equivalent to a North Carolina Class B1 
felony for the purpose of the calculation of prior record level points in criminal 
sentencing, we affirm the Court of Appeals determination and find no error. 
I. 
Factual and Procedural Background 
¶ 2 
 
Defendant was indicted on four counts each of sexual offense with a child by 
an adult and taking indecent liberties with a child by a Clay County grand jury on 11 
September 2012. Defendant’s trial began on 5 December 2016. The victim in the case, 
A.M.D.,2 testified that on multiple occasions when she was seven to eight years old, 
defendant inappropriately touched her private areas and digitally penetrated her 
                                            
2 The juvenile victim’s initials are used to obscure her identity in an effort to protect 
the victim’s privacy. 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
vagina. At the close of the State’s evidence, the State voluntarily dismissed all four 
counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, and the trial court submitted the 
remaining four counts of sexual offense with a child by an adult to the jury after both 
parties had ended their respective presentations. On 9 December 2016, the jury 
returned a verdict of guilty on one count of sexual offense with a child by an adult, 
and found defendant not guilty as to the three remaining charges. The trial court 
continued sentencing until the following week. 
¶ 3 
 
At the sentencing hearing on 13 December 2016, the State tendered to the trial 
court defendant’s conviction on 21 March 2001 for statutory rape in Georgia,3 as well 
as defendant’s more recent conviction on 9 April 2015 for escaping a local jail in Clay 
County, for consideration by the trial court in its calculation of defendant’s prior 
record level. In compliance with the regular procedure for trial courts in North 
Carolina, the trial court in this case utilized a standardized AOC-CR-600B form to 
determine, under a structured sentencing statutory framework, the manner in which 
defendant’s prior convictions would affect the length of active time that defendant 
would serve for his single Class B1 felony conviction in violation of North Carolina 
law for the commission of sexual offense with a child by an adult. The trial court 
                                            
3 The record reflects that the victim in defendant’s 2001 conviction for statutory rape 
in Georgia was the mother of A.M.D. It appears that after defendant was released from the 
active term that he was serving for the Georgia conviction, defendant absconded probation 
with the assistance of A.M.D.’s mother, and was invited by A.M.D.’s mother to reside with 
her and A.M.D. 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
treated defendant’s Georgia statutory rape conviction as a Class B1 felony—which 
garnered defendant nine prior record points for sentencing purposes—because the 
trial court regarded the Georgia statute under which defendant was convicted as 
similar to North Carolina’s own statutory rape statute. In the event that the trial 
court had classified defendant’s Georgia conviction in the lower felony class level of 
Class I, which was an option available to the trial court, then defendant would have 
been assigned only two prior record points for the Georgia conviction as the trial court 
determined defendant’s sentence for his perpetration of the North Carolina criminal 
offense of sexual offense with a child by an adult. Combined with one point assigned 
for defendant’s previous escape conviction, defendant was assigned a total of ten prior 
record level points for sentencing purposes, which automatically categorized him as 
a Level IV offender for sentencing determinations. On the other hand, if the trial 
court had declined to find substantial similarity between the Georgia and North 
Carolina statutes at issue, then defendant would have received a total of only three 
prior record level points which would have classified him as a prior record Level II 
offender under North Carolina’s structured sentencing guidelines. In sentencing 
defendant within the parameters of prior record Level IV, the trial court entered a 
judgment of 335 to 462 months of active time of incarceration for defendant. 
Defendant appealed, and the Court of Appeals panel held that the trial court did not 
err as to finding substantial similarity between the Georgia and North Carolina 
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2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
statutes. 
II. 
Analysis 
¶ 4 
 
On 21 March 2001, defendant was found guilty of the offense of statutory rape 
in the state of Georgia. He was determined to have violated section 16-6-3 of the 
Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which read as follows at the time of defendant’s 
conviction under the Georgia statute:  
(a) A person commits the offense of statutory rape when he 
or she engages in sexual intercourse with any person under 
the age of 16 years and not his or her spouse, provided that 
no conviction shall be had for this offense on the 
unsupported testimony of the victim. 
(b) A person convicted of the offense of statutory rape shall 
be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor 
more than 20 years; provided, however, that if the person 
so convicted is 21 years of age or older, such person shall 
be punished by imprisonment for not less than ten nor 
more than 20 years; provided, further, that if the victim is 
14 or 15 years of age and the person so convicted is no more 
than three years older than the victim, such person shall 
be guilty of a misdemeanor. 
Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3 (2001). Expanded into its component parts, the Georgia 
statute results in a felony conviction if a defendant (1) engages in sexual intercourse 
(2) with any person (3) under sixteen years of age (4) who is not the defendant’s 
spouse, (5) unless the victim is fourteen or fifteen years of age and the defendant is 
no more than three years older than the victim.4 Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3. If the victim 
                                            
4 In the case at bar, defendant’s Georgia conviction was a felony offense. 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
is fourteen or fifteen years old and the defendant is within three years in age of the 
victim, then the defendant is guilty of a misdemeanor. Id.  
¶ 5 
 
Comparably, section 14-27.25 of the General Statutes of North Carolina stated 
the following at the time that the trial court in defendant’s matter at issue conducted 
the sentencing hearing in the present case on 13 December 2016:  
(a) A defendant is guilty of a Class B1 felony if the 
defendant engages in vaginal intercourse with another 
person who is 15 years of age or younger and the defendant 
is at least 12 years old and at least six years older than the 
person, except when the defendant is lawfully married to 
the person. 
(b) Unless the conduct is covered under some other 
provision of law providing greater punishment, a 
defendant is guilty of a Class C felony if the defendant 
engages in vaginal intercourse with another person who is 
15 years of age or younger and the defendant is at least 12 
years old and more than four but less than six years older 
than the person, except when the defendant is lawfully 
married to the person. 
N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25 (2015). The elements of the North Carolina statute require the 
State to prove that a defendant (1) engaged in vaginal intercourse (2) with another 
person (3) fifteen years of age or younger (4) who is not the defendant’s spouse, (5) 
provided that the defendant is at least twelve years of age at the time of the offense 
and (6) at least six years older than the victim to constitute a Class B1 violation of 
N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25(a), and less than six years older but more than four years older 
than the victim to constitute a Class C violation of N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25(b). N.C.G.S. § 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
14-27.25.  
¶ 6 
 
In calculating a defendant’s prior record level, a trial court must determine 
whether the statute under which a defendant was convicted in another state is 
substantially similar to a statute of a particular felony in North Carolina, which the 
State must show by a preponderance of the evidence. Subsection 15A-1340.14(e) 
states in pertinent part:  
Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, a 
conviction occurring in a jurisdiction other than North 
Carolina is classified as a Class I felony if the jurisdiction 
in which the offense occurred classifies the offense as a 
felony . . . . If the State proves by the preponderance of the 
evidence that an offense classified as . . . a felony in the other 
jurisdiction is substantially similar to an offense in North 
Carolina that is classified as a Class I felony or higher, the 
conviction is treated as that class of felony for assigning 
prior record level points.  
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) (2019) (emphasis added). 
¶ 7 
 
We adopt the correctness of determinations made by the Court of Appeals that 
“whether an out-of-state offense is substantially similar to a North Carolina offense 
is a question of law,” State v. Hanton, 175 N.C. App. 250, 254 (2006), and “the 
requirement set forth in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1340.14(e) is not that the statutory 
wording precisely match, but rather that the offense be ‘substantially similar,’ ” State 
v. Sapp, 190 N.C. App. 698, 713 (2008). “We review questions of law de novo.” State 
v. Khan, 366 N.C. 448, 453 (2013). 
¶ 8 
 
In the instant case, the trial court evaluated defendant’s conviction of statutory 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
rape in the state of Georgia to be commensurate with a Class B1 felony in North 
Carolina for sentencing purposes in the present case and hence, in assigning points 
for prior convictions, accorded nine points to the Georgia conviction. We agree with 
the determination of the lower appellate court, to which defendant appealed the trial 
court outcomes, “that the trial court did not err in finding the two offenses 
substantially similar” as Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3 outlaws statutory rape of a person 
who is under the age of sixteen and N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25 prohibits statutory rape of a 
person who is fifteen years of age or younger.5 State v. Graham, 270 N.C. App. 478, 
496 (2020). 
¶ 9 
 
Each of the statutes includes an express reference to the act of physical 
intercourse between the perpetrator of the offense and the victim; Georgia utilizes 
the phrase “engages in sexual intercourse” and North Carolina employs the 
terminology “engages in vaginal intercourse.” Both statutes employ nearly identical 
language that the act of physical intercourse is conducted by the perpetrator with 
another person and that the other person is not the offender’s spouse by virtue of a 
lawful marriage. The variations between the two statutes arise in the areas of the 
                                            
5 While the Court of Appeals recognized that “the State failed to meet its burden of 
proof” due to the State’s failure to introduce a copy of the Georgia statute into evidence 
despite the provision of the foreign enactment to the trial court for review, nonetheless the 
lower appellate court determined that this omission constituted harmless error because “the 
record contains enough information for us to review the trial court’s determination that the 
Georgia and North Carolina offenses were substantially similar.” Graham, 270 N.C. App. at 
491–92. Defendant does not challenge this determination by the Court of Appeals in the 
current appeal to us.  
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
age of the statutory rape victim—Georgia, “under the age of 16 years,” and North 
Carolina, “15 years of age or younger”—and the age difference between the two 
participants which impacts the perpetrator’s degree of punishment—Georgia, “[a] 
person convicted of the offense of statutory rape shall be punished by imprisonment 
for not less than one nor more than 20 years; provided, however, that if the person so 
convicted is 21 years of age or older, such person shall be punished by imprisonment 
for not less than ten nor more than 20 years; provided, further, that if the victim is 
14 or 15 years of age and the person so convicted is no more than three years older 
than the victim, such person shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” Ga. Code Ann. § 16-
6-3, and North Carolina, “[a] defendant is guilty of a Class B1 felony if the defendant 
engages in vaginal intercourse with another person who is 15 years of age or younger 
and the defendant is at least 12 years old and at least six years older than the person 
. . . [and] a defendant is guilty of a Class C felony if the defendant engages in vaginal 
intercourse with another person who is 15 years of age or younger and the defendant 
is at least 12 years older and more than four but less than six years older than the 
person,” N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25. 
¶ 10 
 
Defendant argues that the Georgia statutory rape statute and the North 
Carolina statutory rape statute are not substantially similar in addressing the 
criminal offenses which they respectively prohibit in that there is no age difference 
element in the Georgia law, because unlike the North Carolina law which identifies 
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2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
specific age differences in its felony classifications, defendant notes that “the Georgia 
statute applies equally to all persons under the age of 16 years.” He expounds upon 
this “lack of an age difference element in the Georgia statutory rape statute” by 
offering hypothetical examples of sexual intercourse which he posits would constitute 
the offense of statutory rape in Georgia but would not constitute the offense of 
statutory rape in North Carolina. Defendant submits that in a comparison of a North 
Carolina statute with another state’s statute in order to determine substantial 
similarity between the two, if the difference between the two statutes renders the 
other state’s law narrower or broader, “or if there are differences that work in both 
directions, so that each statute includes conduct not covered by the other, then the 
two statutes will not be substantially similar for purposes of the statute.” 
Additionally, defendant asserts that the Georgia law under examination here is not 
substantially similar to the North Carolina enactment to which it is being paralleled 
because the Georgia law can be violated “by conduct that is only a Class C felony . . . 
in North Carolina.” Defendant’s arguments are unpersuasive. 
¶ 11 
 
Defendant’s position conflates the requirement that statutes subject to 
comparison be substantially similar to one another with his erroneous perception that 
the two statutes must have identicalness to each other. As we previously noted in our 
recognition of Sapp, 190 N.C. App. at 713, the statutory wording of the Georgia 
provision and the North Carolina provision do not need to precisely match in order to 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
be deemed to be substantially similar. Likewise, defendant’s stance that the Georgia 
statute and the North Carolina statute cannot be considered to be substantially 
similar because not every violation of the Georgia law would be tantamount to the 
commission of a Class B1 felony under the comparative North Carolina law is 
unfounded. In applying N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) to the case sub judice, since the 
Georgia offense of statutory rape “is substantially similar to an offense in North 
Carolina that is classified as a Class I felony or higher”—here, a Class B1 felony 
under N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25(a)—then defendant’s conviction of statutory rape in the 
state of Georgia is treated as a Class B1 felony conviction for the assignment of the 
appropriate number of prior record level points. Accordingly, the trial court in the 
instant case correctly ascertained the figure of nine points for felony sentencing 
purposes for defendant’s commission of the Georgia offense of statutory rape for 
which defendant was convicted on 21 March 2001.  
¶ 12 
 
The dissent’s view suffers from the same foundational flaw that is exhibited by 
defendant’s stance on the pivotal resolution of the question as to whether the statutes 
at issue are substantially similar to one another. Although our learned colleagues 
who would reach a different outcome in this case join defendant in confusing the legal 
concept of “substantially similar” with the aspect of identicalness, the dissenters 
further compound their unfortunate jumble of the two different measures by 
expanding the scope of “substantially similar” toward a requirement of exactitude. 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
Standing alone, neither word—“substantially” or “similar”—connotes literalness; 
therefore, when these words are combined to create the legal term of art 
“substantially similar,” this chosen phraseology reinforces the lack of a requirement 
for the statutory language in one enactment to be the same as the statutory language 
in another enactment in order for the two laws to be treated as “substantially 
similar.” Yet, the dissent here—despite the obvious essential pertinent parallels 
between the Georgia statute and the North Carolina statute—would withhold a 
recognition that the two statutes are substantially similar because all of the same 
provisions are not common to each of them. In this respect, although the dissent 
professes that it understands the difference between “substantially similar” and 
identicalness, nonetheless it appears that the dissent is so ensnared and engulfed by 
a need to see a mirrored reflection mutually cast between the two statutes that the 
dissent is compelled to promote this erroneously expansive approach.   
¶ 13 
 
With our agreement with the view of the Court of Appeals that the trial court 
did not err in finding that the two offenses which the Georgia statute and the North 
Carolina statute respectively proscribed were substantially similar, this outcome 
comports with our decision in Sanders, 367 N.C. 716. In Sanders, this Court reviewed 
the criminal offense of the state of Tennessee known as “domestic assault” and the 
North Carolina offense of assault on a female. The Sanders defendant was found by 
a jury to be guilty of robbery with a dangerous weapon, and the trial court examined 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
the defendant’s prior convictions during the trial’s sentencing phase for the purpose 
of establishing the defendant’s sentencing points. His prior convictions included the 
Tennessee offense of domestic assault. 
¶ 14 
 
We noted in Sanders that the Court previously “ha[d] not addressed the 
comparison of out-of-state offenses with North Carolina offenses for purposes of 
determining substantial similarity under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e).” 367 N.C. at 
718. In this case of first impression, this Court held that “[d]etermination of whether 
the out-of-state conviction is substantially similar to a North Carolina offense is a 
question of law involving comparison of the elements of the out-of-state offense to 
those of the North Carolina offense.” Id. at 720 (alteration in original) (quoting State 
v. Fortney, 201 N.C. App. 662, 671 (2010)). In devising a “comparison of the elements” 
test, this Court expressly rejected the State’s argument in Sanders “to look beyond 
the elements of the offenses and consider (1) the underlying facts of defendant’s out-
of-state conviction, and (2) whether, considering the legislative purpose of the 
respective statutes defining the offenses, the North Carolina offense is ‘suitably 
equivalent’ to the out-of-state offense.” Id. at 719. The Court’s implementation of its 
announced “comparison of the elements” test compelled us to determine that the 
Tennessee offense of domestic assault and the North Carolina offense of assault on a 
female were not substantially similar, in that the disparity in the elements of the two 
offenses regarding the genders of the parties involved and the status of their 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
relationships rendered the Tennessee and North Carolina offenses legally 
incomparable to one another for purposes of the determination of prior record level 
points. Id. at 721. 
¶ 15 
 
In attempting to equate the statutes at issue in Sanders with the statutes 
being evaluated in the present case, the dissent demonstrates its misunderstanding 
of the application of Sanders and its misinterpretation of the term “substantially 
similar.” The dissent sees no meaningful difference, for purposes of the determination 
of “substantially similar” statutes, between 1) a one-year difference in the age of early 
teenagers who are victims and 2) specified age difference delineations between 
victims and offenders in the instant case, and 1) a total elimination of one gender 
from the ability to offend and 2) the relationship status of victims and offenders in 
Sanders. In fixating on the exactness of the terminology of the respective statutes 
being compared in each of the two cases and corresponding potential outcomes which 
might be yielded in specific fact pattern scenarios which could arise in each state, the 
dissent promotes a widened view of “substantially similar” which would wrongly 
extend this Court’s holding in Sanders to require identicalness between compared 
statutes from different states and mandate identical outcomes between cases which 
originate both in North Carolina and in the foreign state. Such requirements would 
be inconsistent with our analysis in Sanders, the cited principles which we utilize 
from the Court of Appeals cases of Hanton and Sapp, and the proper construction and 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
application of the concept of “substantially similar.” 
¶ 16 
 
Despite the dissent’s concerns, we understand that it is unwise to endeavor to 
articulate a “bright-line rule” to govern a determination of whether a North Carolina 
statute is “substantially similar” to a statute from another state. While the dissent 
would establish such a standard with a test of identicalness, this guide is erroneous 
as well as incompatible with the concept of the identification of whether enactments 
of law are “substantially similar.” There are so many iterations of so many similar 
laws written in so many different ways, in North Carolina and in the forty-nine other 
states in America, that the courts of this state must necessarily possess the ability to 
operate with the flexibility that the phrase “substantially similar” inherently signifies 
in determining whether statutes which are being compared share the operative 
elements in the evaluation. While such an exercise is predictably challenging, we are 
confident that the courts of this state have sufficient guidance and flexibility to 
properly conduct the prescribed analysis of the statutes’ respective elements. 
¶ 17 
 
In applying the “comparison of the elements” test articulated in Sanders to the 
present case, the harmonious determinations of the trial court and the Court of 
Appeals here are consistent with our view that the Georgia statutory rape offense 
prohibited by Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3 and the North Carolina statutory rape offense 
forbidden by N.C.G.S. § 14-27.25(a) are substantially similar. Just as the State in 
Sanders was unsuccessful in its assertion that a court’s determination of whether two 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
statutes are “substantially similar” should be premised on considerations other than 
the statute’s elements, defendant is unsuccessful here in his argument that is 
contrary to the cited statutory and case law, while being incongruous with the 
“comparison of the elements” test which supports the conclusion that the Georgia and 
North Carolina offenses at issue are substantially similar for purposes of the 
computation of defendant’s prior record level points for sentencing. 
III. 
Conclusion 
¶ 18 
 
The Georgia statutory rape statute under which defendant was previously 
convicted was substantially similar to North Carolina’s statutory rape statute so as 
to authorize the trial court to regard defendant’s conviction of the offense of statutory 
rape in the state of Georgia as a Class B1 felony offense for purposes of determining 
defendant’s prior record level points for sentencing purposes. The trial court did not 
err in this determination, and the Court of Appeals was correct in its subsequent 
determination to affirm the trial court on this sole issue which we have addressed 
upon discretionary review. 
AFFIRMED. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice Earls dissenting. 
¶ 19 
 
An out-of-state statute is not “substantially similar” to a North Carolina 
statute within the meaning of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) if conduct that is proscribed 
by the out-of-state statute is lawful under the North Carolina statute. That was the 
substance of the elements-based approach to comparing criminal statutes we 
articulated in State v. Sanders, 367 N.C. 716 (2014). Despite its protestations to the 
contrary, the majority does not adhere to Sanders. The resulting decision fails to 
“giv[e] fair and clear warning” to the public of the consequences of engaging in 
criminal conduct, United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271 (1997), and construes 
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) in a way that likely “fail[s] to meet constitutional 
standards for definiteness and clarity,” Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 361 (1983). 
Because the majority’s analysis will not yield an “evenhanded, predictable, or 
consistent” application of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e), Johnson v. United States, 576 
U.S. 591, 606 (2015), I respectfully dissent. 
I. 
The majority’s decision is in tension with Sanders 
¶ 20 
 
In this case, the Georgia statute that the defendant, John D. Graham, violated 
is not “substantially similar” to any Class B1 felony provided by North Carolina law. 
This conclusion necessarily follows from any fair reading of Sanders.  
¶ 21 
 
In Sanders, this Court considered whether a Tennessee statute prohibiting 
individuals from assaulting any “domestic abuse victim,” Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-
111(b) (2009), was “substantially similar” to the North Carolina statutory offense of 
  
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
assaulting a female, N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(2) (2013). We held that it was not. Our 
reasoning was straightforward. Under the Tennessee statute, an individual was 
guilty of the specified offense if the person assaulted someone who fell within one of 
six defined categories of “domestic abuse victims.” None of these categories contained 
the requirement found in N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(2) that “the victim . . . be female [and] 
the assailant . . . be male and of a certain age.” Sanders, 367 N.C. at 720. Thus,  
a woman assaulting her child or her husband could be 
convicted of “domestic assault” in Tennessee, but could not 
be convicted of “assault on a female” in North Carolina. A 
male stranger who assaults a woman on the street could be 
convicted of “assault on a female” in North Carolina, but 
could not be convicted of “domestic assault” in Tennessee. 
Id. at 721. This Court unanimously agreed that because the defendant could have 
been convicted under the Tennessee statute for conduct that would not have been 
criminal under the North Carolina statute, the two statutes were not “substantially 
similar.” Id. 
¶ 22 
 
Sanders yielded two principles which should dictate the outcome of this case. 
The first principle is that “[d]etermination of whether the out-of-state conviction is 
substantially similar to a North Carolina offense is a question of law involving 
comparison of the elements of the out-of-state offense to those of the North Carolina 
offense.” Id. at 720 (alteration in original) (quoting State v. Fortney, 201 N.C. App. 
662, 671 (2010)). Accordingly, when ascertaining whether two statutes are 
substantially similar, we look only to the statutory elements of the offense, not to the 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
factual underpinnings of the defendant’s convictions.  
¶ 23 
 
The second principle is that an out-of-state criminal statute is not substantially 
similar to a North Carolina criminal statute if a defendant could be convicted under 
the out-of-state statute for acts which would not be criminal (or not criminal at the 
same offense level) if committed in North Carolina. Adherence to this principle is 
necessary to faithfully implement the elements-based approach. When all of the 
conduct targeted by an out-of-state statute is encompassed within the North Carolina 
statute it is being compared to, there is no doubt that the defendant has committed 
an offense which would garner the same number of prior record level points had the 
defendant engaged in the proscribed conduct in North Carolina. A defendant who 
previously committed an act giving rise to an out-of-state criminal conviction will 
never be sentenced more harshly than a similarly situated defendant who previously 
committed the exact same act in North Carolina. Further, the facts underlying the 
defendant’s out-of-state conviction are made irrelevant—whatever the defendant did 
to earn his or her out-of-state conviction, his or her conduct would necessarily violate 
the North Carolina statute it is being compared to.  
¶ 24 
 
The elements-based approach adopted in Sanders is not difficult to apply. That 
is, or was, its primary virtue. In this case, applying Sanders’ correct interpretation of 
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) dictates that Graham’s prior conviction in Georgia should 
be treated as a Class I felony for purposes of sentencing. The Georgia statute Graham 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
was convicted under, Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3 (2001), indisputably encompasses 
conduct which is not a Class B1 felony in North Carolina. If an eighteen-year-old 
individual has sexual intercourse with a fourteen-year-old in Georgia, that person 
has violated Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3. If an eighteen-year-old individual has sexual 
intercourse with a fourteen-year-old in North Carolina, that person has not violated 
any statute creating a Class B1 felony offense in this state that existed at the time 
Mr. Graham was convicted of his offense in Georgia. See N.C.G.S. § 14-27.7A(a) (2001) 
(making it a Class B1 felony “if . . . defendant engages in vaginal intercourse or a 
sexual act with another person who is 13, 14, or 15 years old and . . . defendant is at 
least six years older than the person”); N.C.G.S. § 14-27.2A(a) (2001) (making it a 
Class B1 felony “if the [defendant] is at least 18 years of age and engages in vaginal 
intercourse with a victim who is a child under the age of 13 years”); N.C.G.S. § 14-
27.2(a) (2001) (making it a Class B1 felony “if the person engages in vaginal 
intercourse . . . [w]ith a victim who is a child under the age of 13 years and the 
defendant is at least 12 years old and is at least four years older than the victim”). 
Under Sanders, we should stop there. 
¶ 25 
 
Whatever the majority says it is doing in extending beyond this point, it is not 
applying Sanders. The point of the elements-based approach is not to engage in a 
subjective, qualitative assessment of the substance of two criminal offenses. The point 
is to enable a court to convert an out-of-state offense into an in-state offense for 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
sentencing purposes, without needing to resort to an independent inquiry into the 
factual circumstances of a defendant’s prior out-of-state conviction, and without 
creating the risk that a defendant who previously engaged in criminal conduct in 
another state will be sentenced differently than a similarly situated defendant who 
engaged in the same conduct in North Carolina.  
¶ 26 
 
The fact that Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-3 generally targets the same kind of conduct 
as some North Carolina Class B1 felony offenses does not make the statute 
“substantially similar” under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e). It is improper to sentence a 
defendant based upon our own intuition that most of the conduct prohibited by an 
out-of-state statute would also be prohibited by an analogous North Carolina statute. 
Cf. United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 2326 (2019) (“[T]he imposition of criminal 
punishment can’t be made to depend on a judge’s estimation of the degree of risk 
posed by a crime’s imagined ‘ordinary case.’ ”). Squinting at two statutes and saying 
“close enough” is not, in this context, good enough. The majority’s freewheeling 
approach is an invitation to unchecked judicial discretion. As a result, some 
defendants will inevitably be sentenced as if they had previously committed more 
serious offenses than they actually committed. 
¶ 27 
 
The majority is also wrong to suggest that faithful application of the elements-
based approach reflects an “erroneous perception that the two statutes must have 
identicalness to each other.” No one disputes that “substantially similar” does not 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
mean “identical.” However, the rule articulated in Sanders in no way requires the 
State to prove that an out-of-state statute is a carbon copy of the North Carolina 
statute it is being compared to.  
¶ 28 
 
Two criminal statutes may contain the same elements yet utilize different 
statutory language or be structured in different ways. For example, a hypothetical 
out-of-state statute which makes it a crime to intentionally use physical force to harm 
or threaten a female person, provided that the perpetrator is a male above the age of 
majority, would be substantially similar to N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(2), which makes it a 
crime for a “male person at least 18 years of age” to “[a]ssault[ ] a female.” The 
statutes would not be identically worded, but they would be substantially similar 
because both would require the State to prove the same elements in order to convict 
a defendant.  
¶ 29 
 
Similarly, two criminal statutes may contain different elements but still be 
substantially similar if all of the conduct proscribed by the out-of-state statute is 
proscribed by the North Carolina statute it is being compared to. A hypothetical out-
of-state statute which makes it a crime to intentionally use physical force to harm or 
threaten a female person under the age of 12, provided that the perpetrator is a male 
at least twenty years old, would be substantially similar to N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(2), 
even though the statutes would not contain exactly the same elements, because 
anyone convicted under the out-of-state statute would necessarily have engaged in 
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
conduct proscribed by N.C.G.S. § 14-33(c)(2). Sanders gave full effect to every word 
the legislature chose to include in N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e). We should in turn give 
full effect to a unanimous decision interpreting the statute, rather than depart from 
its well-reasoned principles. 
II. 
The majority’s reasoning creates substantial uncertainty for lower 
courts and criminal defendants 
¶ 30 
 
The majority eschews the elements-based approach we established in Sanders, 
but it is not entirely clear what has been offered as a replacement. As the majority 
acknowledges, the Georgia and North Carolina statutes at issue in this case vary “in 
the areas of the age of the statutory rape victim” and in “the age difference between 
the two participants which impacts the perpetrator’s degree of punishment.” Further, 
the majority does not dispute that an individual could engage in conduct which 
“would constitute the offense of statutory rape in Georgia but would not constitute 
the offense of statutory rape in North Carolina.” Nevertheless, the majority cursorily 
dismisses Graham’s position that the statutes are not substantially similar as 
“unfounded.” According to the majority, the State should prevail here because “[e]ach 
of the statutes includes an express reference to the act of physical intercourse 
between the perpetrator of the offense and the victim,” and the two statutes “employ 
nearly identical language that the act of physical intercourse is conducted by the 
perpetrator with another person and that the other person is not the offender’s spouse 
by virtue of a lawful marriage.”  
STATE V. GRAHAM 
2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
¶ 31 
 
Of course, nearly the same could be said for the statutes at issue in Sanders. 
Both of those statutes criminalized the same kind of violent conduct directed against 
statutorily defined category of victims. In Sanders, we held that two statutes were 
not substantially similar because each targeted conduct directed towards distinct 
classes of persons—“domestic abuse victims” under the Tennessee statute, “females” 
under the North Carolina statute. Here, the majority holds that the two statutes are 
substantially similar even though they target conduct directed towards distinct 
classes of persons—anyone under the age of sixteen who is not the perpetrator’s 
spouse under the Georgia statute, anyone under the age of fifteen who is not the 
perpetrator’s spouse and who is at least six years younger than the perpetrator under 
the North Carolina statute. The majority leaves lower courts, criminal defendants, 
and the public guessing as to why the distinctions we found dispositive in Sanders 
are irrelevant here.  
¶ 32 
 
The majority’s unwillingness to articulate a clear legal rule, or even a squishier 
but still bounded multifactor test, is not only in tension with Sanders. It also creates 
a significant risk of rendering N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) unconstitutionally vague. 
Under the majority’s interpretation of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e), an individual with 
a prior out-of-state conviction has no real way of knowing how they will be sentenced 
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
if they violate a North Carolina statute.1 If the elements of the out-of-state criminal 
statute are in any way different than the elements of the North Carolina criminal 
statute it is being compared to, an individual will be tasked with speculating as to 
whether the elements are different enough to make the statutes not substantially 
similar, without any meaningful guidance from this Court. The United States 
Supreme Court has long held that precisely this kind of uncertainty is inconsistent 
with due process rights. See, e.g., United States v. Batchelder, 442 U.S. 114, 123 (1979) 
(“[V]ague sentencing provisions may pose constitutional questions if they do not state 
with sufficient clarity the consequences of violating a given criminal statute.”).  
¶ 33 
 
As a practical matter, the majority’s amorphous reasoning will confer upon 
trial courts increased discretion to determine whether two statutes are or are not 
substantially similar based solely upon their own judgment. There are some matters 
which should be left entirely to the discretion of a trial court, but determining how 
many prior record level points should be assessed for an out-of-state conviction is not 
one of them. The majority’s “grant of wholly standardless discretion to determine the 
                                            
1 The majority claims that holding the two statutes at issue in this case to be not 
substantially similar would ignore “the obvious essential pertinent parallels” between them. 
I acknowledge that the two statutes at issue here share some similarities, but the majority’s 
reasoning does not yield any principled way of discerning whether two statutes which share 
some similarities are or are not substantially similar within the meaning of N.C.G.S. § 15A-
1340.14(e). The majority does not explain which elements are “essential” and “pertinent” and 
which are not, nor does the majority explain how closely the elements must “parallel” each 
other for two statutes to be substantially similar. Even if the outcome the majority reaches 
could be justified under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e), the reasoning the majority deploys fails 
to provide necessary guidance to lower courts and future litigants.  
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
severity of punishment appears inconsistent with due process.” Bankers Life & Cas. 
Co. v. Crenshaw, 486 U.S. 71, 88 (1988); see also Johnson, 576 U.S. at 602 (“Invoking 
so shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison . . . does not comport with the 
Constitution’s guarantee of due process.”). Sanders circumscribed this discretion by 
requiring trial courts to conduct an objective analysis which yielded predictable 
results. The majority’s new approach places N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) on much 
shakier constitutional ground. 
¶ 34 
 
What does remain clear after today is that a court is never permitted to engage 
in an examination of the factual underpinnings of a defendant’s out-of-state 
conviction. As the United States Supreme Court cautioned when it adopted 
something akin to the elements-based approach in the context of interpreting the 
Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924, “the practical difficulties and potential 
unfairness of a factual approach are daunting.” Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 
601 (1990). Practically, it is unclear what sources a court would be permitted to draw 
from when attempting to determine whether the facts giving rise to the defendant’s 
out-of-state conviction would have constituted an in-state criminal offense at the 
same level. In at least some cases—especially those resolved by plea bargain—the 
factual basis for the defendant’s out-of-state conviction might be impossible to 
surmise. Legally, because the court’s inquiry into the factual basis for an out-of-state 
conviction could lead to enhanced criminal punishment, a defendant’s Sixth 
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2021-NCSC-125 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
Amendment rights would necessarily be implicated. See, e.g., Blakely v. Washington, 
542 U.S. 296, 303 (2004) (explaining that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights are 
violated if the court imposes an increased sentence based upon “facts supporting [a] 
finding [that] were neither admitted by [the defendant] nor found by a jury”). 
Accordingly, although the majority departs from the approach we endorsed in 
Sanders in critical ways, nothing in today’s decision gives license to trial courts to 
sentence criminal defendants based upon ad hoc inquiries into the circumstances of 
their out-of-state convictions, a practice which would be akin to constitutionally 
dubious “collateral trials.” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 23 (2005). 
III. 
The majority’s interpretation of the phrase “substantially similar” is in 
tension with the structure and purpose of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) 
¶ 35 
 
At its core, this case involves a question of statutory interpretation: What did 
the General Assembly intend when it chose the phrase “substantially similar” in 
N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e)? The majority contends that the legislature did not intend 
for courts to treat statutes as substantially similar only when “the statutory wording 
precisely match[es].” True, but the structure of the provision at issue makes clear 
that finding two statutes to be “substantially similar” is an exception to the baseline 
rule, rather than the expected outcome every time a criminal defendant has a prior 
out-of-state conviction. Subsection § 15A-1340.14(e) provides that “[e]xcept as 
otherwise provided in this subsection, a conviction occurring in a jurisdiction other 
than North Carolina is classified as a Class I felony if the jurisdiction in which the 
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
offense occurred classifies the offense as a felony.” (Emphasis added.) The majority’s 
reasoning threatens to make a finding of substantial similarity the default, in 
contrast to clear legislative intent. See, e.g., State v. Hogan, 234 N.C. App. 218, 228 
(2014) (“[I]f the State establishes that the defendant has an out-of-state felony 
conviction, it is by default considered a Class I felony . . . .”). 
¶ 36 
 
Moreover, it is worth noting that the majority’s reasoning cuts both ways: It is 
often a defendant who has been convicted of an offense categorized as a felony in 
another state who invokes N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) in an effort to prove that the 
out-of-state felony offense is actually “substantially similar” to a North Carolina 
misdemeanor. N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.14(e) (“If the offender proves by the preponderance 
of the evidence that an offense classified as a felony in the other jurisdiction is 
substantially similar to an offense that is a misdemeanor in North Carolina, the 
conviction is treated as that class of misdemeanor for assigning prior record level 
points.” (emphasis added)); see also Hogan, 234 N.C. App. at 229 (treating a New 
Jersey conviction as a Class I felony because the “defendant failed to show that 
[felony] third degree theft in New Jersey is substantially similar to a North Carolina 
misdemeanor”). Thus, by removing any reliable and clear standard for a movant to 
prove that two statutes are substantially similar, the majority’s reasoning guarantees 
both that individuals whose conduct would not be felonious under North Carolina law 
will more haphazardly be sentenced as if they had committed a felony and that 
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
individuals whose conduct would have been felonious under North Carolina law will 
more haphazardly be sentenced as if they had committed misdemeanors. This 
outcome stands in stark contrast to the design of a statute plainly intended to ensure 
that criminal defendants in North Carolina with prior out-of-state convictions are 
sentenced at parity with criminal defendants in North Carolina with prior in-state 
convictions.  
IV. 
Conclusion 
¶ 37 
 
Our Court does not seek to fashion clear legal rules (solely) because we are 
lawyers who, by nature and by training, tend to be persnickety. First and foremost, 
we strive for clarity because the force and legitimacy of law depends in no small part 
on its comprehensibility and predictability. Ambiguous laws are susceptible to 
unequal application under the guise of judicial discretion. The need for certainty is 
especially pronounced when interpreting statutes imposing criminal sanctions. 
See, e.g., Clark’s Charlotte, Inc. v. Hunter, 261 N.C. 222, 233 (1964) (explaining that 
a statute may be unconstitutionally vague if it fails to “warn people of the criminal 
consequences of certain conduct”); Johnson, 576 U.S. at 597 (holding a provision of 18 
U.S.C. § 924 unconstitutional because it “leaves grave uncertainty about how to 
estimate the risk posed by a crime”). The majority’s decision to trade Sanders’ clear 
legal rule for a Delphic muddle disserves these constitutional interests and produces 
an interpretation of a statute at odds with legislative intent. Therefore, I respectfully 
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Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
dissent. 
 
Justice ERVIN joins in this dissenting opinion.