The double-homicide for which Issiah Ross is now standing trial in Orange County superior court led to the passage of “Lyric and Devin’s Law,” which is named for Lyric Woods and Devin Clark, the two teenage victims in the case (see related story, this edition).
The law was passed by the General Assembly in 2023 amid concerns about how juvenile privacy laws may have impeded investigators’ attempts to apprehend the suspect following the discovery of the victims’ bodies along a power line easement off Buckhorn Road, on Mebane’s outskirts.
Investigators said at the time that they’d received credible information that Ross had fled to Delaware, but they couldn’t publicly release his name or photo under laws that provided confidentiality for juvenile suspects at the time.
The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association general counsel Eddie Caldwell had said at the time that investigators knew who the suspect was in Woods’ and Clark’s murder but couldn’t issue a bulletin, couldn’t publish his photograph, and couldn’t identify him by name because Ross, then 17, was classified as a juvenile under the existing state law.
Statutes in place at the time only allowed law enforcement officials to release the names, photos, and charges involving juvenile suspects to be released once a case had been transferred from juvenile court to superior court.
Ross was apprehended on October 5, 2022 by the Delaware Violent Crime Safe Streets Task Force, Orange County sheriff Charles Blackwood outlined during a subsequent press conference.
“Lyric and Devin’s Law” now allows law enforcement and prosecutors to release the
name, photograph, and charges against a juvenile who is accused of a serious crime, once a juvenile petition is filed (similar to an arrest warrant for an adult) to help locate and apprehend the suspect, providing a judge authorizes the release.
