Drivers told they may lose licenses for traffic charges they thought were dismissed

CHARLOTTE — Some drivers are worried their licenses are being suspended months after their traffic charges were accidentally dismissed because of a computer error.

Natally Sosa told Action 9 that she got a speeding ticket. Last fall, her lawyer, Cameron deBrun, went to court for her and saw her case was dismissed.

He didn’t know why at the time, but the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts experienced a computer error that caused thousands of traffic charges to be dismissed by mistake, including hundreds of DWIs.

When the computer error took place, the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office said roughly 16,000 charges were dismissed by accident. It now says it was more around 6,000.

No matter what the number or reason, deBrun and Sosa figured she was in the clear.

But the county DA’s office reinstated many of those cases.

Months later, Sosa got a letter from the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles saying it was suspending her license for “failure to appear” in court.

Sosa says she’s worried about driving now. “I don’t know what to do in that case,” she said. “When I (go to) drive, police (are) going to stop me and tell me, ‘Your license is suspended’ or something.”

The Mecklenburg County DA’s Office told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke:

“After the DA’s Office learned that the Administrative Office of the Courts mistakenly entered dismissals in thousands of cases, this office immediately sought to have those cases corrected. The cases were corrected, however, when those cases were reactivated in the courts’ computer system, some but not all of them apparently appeared in the system as if the defendant had not come to court on their court date. As a result, those cases appeared on a report that AOC provides to the Clerk’s Office showing the cases in which failures to appear should be entered by the clerks. Because the affected cases were traffic cases, the failures to appear were transmitted to the DMV, and letters were mailed to notify the licensed driver that their license was subject to suspension for a missed court date. As soon as the DA’s Office learned this had happened, we immediately took action again, and we worked with the Clerk’s Office to prevent this from happening in other cases and strike any failure to appear that had been issued in such cases we were aware of.”

But deBrun says Sosa and three other drivers he represents must have fallen through the cracks.

“The danger of losing your license is massive,” deBrun said. “(It) hurts my clients. Makes them worried and stressed out. What’s going to happen to their licenses? They don’t know.”

deBrun went to court and sorted it out. All four drivers get to keep their licenses.

“I need to drive. I don’t have no one to go with me. I need my license to drive,” Sosa said.

If you’re in this situation and don’t have a lawyer, go to Mecklenburg County courthouse and go to the Clerk’s Office, or you can speak directly with a prosecutor. They’re available 1:30-3 p.m. Monday through Thursday in courtroom 1130.

VIDEO: More than 16K charges erroneously dismissed due to computer error, DA says

More than 16K charges erroneously dismissed due to computer error, DA says

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