A misdemeanor charge of failure to report a crime against a juvenile, filed in February against then- deputy superintendent of the Alamance-Burlington school system, James Lowell Rogers, was subsequently dismissed due as result of additional information about the case that came out during his investigation, Alamance County district attorney Sean Boone told The Alamance News.
Rogers, 47, white, male, of 2326 Marlow Drive, Burlington, had been charged by the State Bureau of Investigation in February of this year with misdemeanor failure to report a crime against a juvenile that allegedly occurred on November 13, 2023, according to his court files.
Meanwhile, Rogers submitted his resignation from ABSS, effective June 30, based on the semi-monthly personnel report that school board members approved at their June 11 work session.
Boone also pointed to the fact that Rogers is no longer employed with ABSS as part of the basis for dismissal of the charge.
“During the course of our investigation, we developed information that showed there may be an explanation that might influence the direction of the case,” Boone said in an interview Wednesday.
Alamance County court records had stated that Rogers’ case was scheduled to be heard in Alamance County criminal district court on June 25.
However, Rogers’ June 25 hearing was canceled at the direction of Alamance County district court judge Kathryn (“Katie”) Overby, according to his court file.
The charge against Rogers was dismissed without leave by the district attorney, without any type of plea agreement, barring the charge from being re-filed at a later date.
The charge against Rogers was originally filed by the State Bureau of Investigation on February 19 and was continued three times between March and April before it was dropped altogether, according to his court file.
A criminal summons that the SBI issued for Rogers in February alleged: “The defendant unlawfully and willfully did and knowingly fail to report immediately a sexual offense that the defendant reasonably should have known was committed against I.B.R. [an approximately 7-year-old male], who was a juvenile at the time of the offense.”
North Carolina’s mandatory reporting law – enacted by the General Assembly in 1971 – was amended in 2013 to establish a criminal penalty for failing to report certain crimes against juveniles. The charge is classified as a Class I misdemeanor, with a conviction carrying a jail sentence of up to 120 days, plus fines and court costs.
Hired in 2022 as the deputy superintendent for ABSS, Rogers was suspended on February 20 without pay and remained suspended with pay until June 30, when his resignation from ABSS took effect. During his suspension, Rogers continued to receive his monthly salary, which annually totaled $173,055.95, according to data previously furnished by ABSS.
Boone told the newspaper last week that it will be up to a judge to determine whether to grant a subsequent request by Rogers to expunge the charge from his criminal record.
Rogers’ petition for expungement – citing the fact that the charges had been dismissed – was filed in Alamance County’s criminal courts system on June 26.
The petition for expungement appears to have been voluntarily dismissed Thursday, July 25, based on a limited amount of information available from a case index posted on “eCourts,” the state’s new online court records management system that launched in Alamance County this spring.
Rogers appears to have no prior criminal record, according to Alamance County’s online court filing system and the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts.
