Emily Jean Robinson, 45, formerly of Snow Camp has lost her appeal in her 2024 drug conviction, based on a unanimous opinion issued Wednesday by a three-member panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Robinson, who is the daughter of Alamance County’s sheriff, had appealed her convictions of possession with intent to sell or deliver a controlled substance (Fentanyl), maintain a dwelling to keep a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia on grounds that a special superior court judge who presided over her trial in May 2024 had unfairly prejudiced the outcome by refusing to let her defense attorneys make two opening and closing arguments, the case background states.
Robinson had pleaded not guilty to the charges at the outset of her trial in Alamance County superior court.
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On appeal, Robinson argued unsuccessfully that the judge who presided over her trial had erred by allowing an expert to testify about toxicology results and by allowing her to be sentenced for both death by distribution and sale of a controlled substance, according to the case background.
The charge of death by distribution stemmed from the September 2021 death of Robert Starner of Burlington, who died after overdosing on Fentanyl that investigators in the case later determined had been purchased from Robinson. She is currently serving a sentence of five to seven years and is incarcerated at the Anson Correctional Institute in Polkton, according to the N.C. Department of Adult Corrections.
Robinson also argued unsuccessfully that she’d received ineffective assistance by counsel, Graham attorneys George Hunt and Octavis White, during her trial in Alamance County. Hunt and White had chosen not to call any new witnesses on her behalf after the prosecutors had rested their case but instead asked the presiding judge for permission to make closing arguments before, and after, the state had a chance to sum up its case, which the judge denied.
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The appeals court panel rejected all three of those grounds, based on the opinion issued Tuesday, which was written by Jefferson Griffin, with appeals court judges Allegra Collins and Michael Stading concurring. The appeals court panel acknowledged that, “despite losing the ability to argue first and last” at her trial, Robinson’s appellate attorneys hadn’t demonstrated how it prejudiced the outcome of her case.
Robinson was represented for her appeal by Glenn Gerding and Amanda S. Zimmer of the state Office of the Appellate Defender.
Nor had the presiding judge erred in allowing “expert testimony of machine-generated data” and in sentencing for death by distribution and sale of a controlled substance, Griffin wrote in his opinion for the Court of Appeals.
“Lastly, [Robinson] did not receive ineffective assistance of counsel,” Griffin wrote, noting earlier in his opinion that her defense attorneys “concluded the argument to the jury, but did not deliver the first argument,” preserving the defendant’s “right to at least conclude” the arguments to the jury.
Due to her relationship with the sheriff, the local district attorney’s office asked the state to assign a team of prosecutors from outside the county to handle the case against Robinson.
The appointed prosecutors went on to assemble a single case from charges that Burlington’s police department had filed, and in May 2024, the consolidated case went to trial before Edwin G. Wilson, Jr., a retired superior court judge who had been appointed by the governor’s office.
