NC officer shooting plea stands despite nameless indictment

RALEIGH (AP) — A 2014 plea agreement by a man arrested 16 years after the fatal shooting of a police officer should stand, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Friday while reversing a lower court decision that declared it should be canceled because an indictment was defective.
The justices overturned the 2020 ruling of the Court of Appeals involving Marc Peterson Oldroyd, who was sentenced to a maximum of almost 13 years in prison.
Oldroyd was one of three men arrested in 2012 for the 1996 slaying of Jonesville police Sgt. Gregory Keith Martin. Oldroyd pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, attempted armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.
According to documents, Oldroyd and the two other men had planned to rob the Huddle House in Jonesville. The other two men used a stolen truck, but the backdoor was locked and the robbery abandoned. Oldroyd was in a separate getaway car in the parking lot. Martin later stopped the truck on Interstate 77, and ultimately one of the other men shot the officer, according to documents. Oldroyd and the two men met later at an apartment, authorities said.
On appeal, Oldroyd’s lawyer argued the attempted armed robbery count against his client was incurably flawed because the alleged victims were only listed as “employees of the Huddle House” at a certain Yadkin County address, and not specifically named workers. A majority of a Court of Appeals panel agreed, which meant the entire plea agreement had to be vacated.
But in Friday’s unanimous opinion, Associate Justice Mike Morgan said that the indictment fulfilled laws of criminal procedure.
“An indictment is sufficient if it asserts facts plainly, concisely, and in a non-evidentiary manner which supports each of the elements of the charged crime with the exactitude necessary to allow the defendant to prepare a defense and to protect the defendant from double jeopardy,” Morgan wrote.
Scott Vincent Sica, the man who fired the weapon at Martin, was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He died in 2016. The other conspirator, identified in correctional records as Brian E. Whittaker, accepted a similar plea as Oldroyd and was sentenced to a maximum of roughly 17½ years in prison. Oldroyd’s projected release date is early next year.