RALEIGH—Last month (February 2024), the State Juvenile Defender walked into a room full of family, friends, guests and colleagues—from the past and present—thinking he was going to a routine budget meeting. Instead, he found himself appropriately surprised, humbled and gracious for the folks who had come to the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts building in Raleigh to celebrate his 25 years of state service. On the surface, it appeared to be a typical run-of-the-mill 25-year work anniversary. But there’s more to it than that. In November 2004, Eric Zogry was appointed as the first State Juvenile Defender in North Carolina, with a term that began January 2005. Not only was he the first juvenile defender in the state, but he was also the first defender in the entire nation to work in a state office solely dedicated to defending youth rights. So, this milestone was quite special—not just for Zogry as a professional—but also for the practice of juvenile defense in North Carolina and all over the United States.
Since that initial appointment, Zogry has been reappointed a consecutive four more times. The trailblazer for statewide youth defense systems, Zogry dedicated the last 19 of his 25 years working in public defense to North Carolina’s youth. His work has gained national attention and serves as the model for juvenile defense.
“North Carolina has a robust juvenile defense system, thanks to Eric’s outstanding leadership and vision. He has been a true advocate for court-involved youth and the lawyers who represent them,” said the Chair of the IDS Commission, the Honorable Dorothy Hairston Mitchell. “Eric and his team are always available and offer highly sought-after training to juvenile defense attorneys, and their expertise in this field is widely recognized. Eric ensures that his staff is made up of highly experienced and motivated individuals.”
“When I was a juvenile defense attorney, I attended training sessions provided by Eric’s office, and I know that I became a better lawyer as a result,” she added. “Having them as a resource gave me confidence, and the continuous education they provided has also informed my service as a District Court Judge. And as the Chair of the IDS Commission, I am incredibly proud of Eric and his team. We are grateful for his 25 years of service so far and the legacy he is building.”
The Gault Center is the national leader for and resource to youth defense counsel providing guiding legal principles, training and technical support, policy guidance and support, and community building. Their state mission is “[t]o promote justice for all children by ensuring excellence in youth defense.”
In a separate interview, Mary Ann Scali, executive director there, had this to say about Zogry:
Eric was instrumental in creating the State Bar Specialization in North Carolina, establishing the Office of the Juvenile Defender, creating and hosting training programs that are specialized, creating the certification process, leading several federal grant awards.
He was also the Director of the Southern Juvenile Defender Center from 2010 to 2014 and during his tenure in that role he re-formed the advisory committee, promulgated governing bylaws, performed site visits in all seven states, assisted local defenders on various initiatives and planned and reinstated the Southern Regional Summit which has since been held every year. Eric served on the committee to write and adopt the National Juvenile Defense Standards (now the National Youth Defense Standards).
We would love for every state to follow North Carolina and establish a state-level Youth Defender office! Eric has truly elevated the status and practice of youth defense.
Ebony Howard, assistant director of the Gault Center, said, “When talking about the best example for a strong system of youth defense, I point to the N.C. Office of the Juvenile Defender and Eric’s work on behalf of children. That office is a strong example of how youth defense systems should be designed, and Eric is an example of a leader we all want to emulate.”
Like most professional journeys, Zogry’s path to the OJD office was not without a few bumps and missteps. As a matter of fact, he has kept various office items from previous gigs—souvenirs if you will—to serve as a visual reminder of how he got where he is and, in his words, “how not to screw up again.” Zogry admits that he has had to focus on becoming a more professional person to gain credibility and respect.
Zogry said that his public service career really began in 1995, when he was a summer intern with the then Department of Crime Control and Public Safety. After returning to North Carolina from attending law school at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Zogry gained experience with the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Commission and NCAOC Research Division, unaware at the time that these experiences were the right combination for him to apply to the position of State Juvenile Defender when it was first created.
Zogry then took a short detour with a county attorney’s office, but it didn’t work out for either party and he soon found himself working at a temp agency called Accustaff—a place which may or may not still exist—where he worked as a temp (he still keeps a mug to remind him of those days) while still applying for legal jobs.
From the mailroom, he heard from Senior Resident Superior Court Judge (and former Sentencing Commission Director) Tom Ross to suggest he reach out to then Chief Public Defender Wally Harrelson in Guilford County and asked if they needed help over there in the public defender office.
As luck would have it, there was an opening, and Zogry landed a job in the Guilford County Public Defender Office as an Assistant Public Defender. There, his quarter-of-a-century-long career in defense began. He spent six years as an assistant public defender, focusing only on youth defense and involuntary commitment cases and gaining invaluable trial experience.
It was those experiences and being hand-picked with other in-state and national experts to work on a national landmark report on juvenile justice in the early 2000s, which made him the right fit for the Office of the Juvenile Defender (OJD). The body of work in that now 20-year-old report fueled the establishment of the OJD in North Carolina. In a nutshell, the report found that youth defenders were not as effective or knowledgeable in juvenile work; they had no training and no support. It sparked the idea to create the OJD during a time in North Carolina history when recently under the leadership of then Governor Jim Hunt, the Juvenile Code and court was changing drastically, focusing on public safety but less so on due process for youth.
Zogry said, “There wasn’t anything like [OJD]; there wasn’t anything like it in the country. They didn’t say, ‘What are they doing in Ohio or California?’ North Carolina was the very first to have a statewide, publicly funded office that only works with children in juvenile justice. There were bits and pieces in different places, but not quite what we have.”
Other states did not have an Office of Indigent Defense Services to provide guidance and oversight to the public defense system.
Zogry said that with the Office of Indigent Defense Services having been established in 2000, and in the wake of the report, “Policy makers were thinking, ‘IDS has an Office of the Capital Defender and an Office of the Appellate Defender, so why not have an Office of the Juvenile Defender?’” And that is how the OJD came to be.
And when the OJD was established, Zogry felt the pressure of being in a one-of-a-kind, brand-new state office, and he set out with only a two-page guide of requirements and expectations to take care of a couple of the “most logical” things first.
“IDS was supportive, but it was bumpy, trying to set priorities – there were a lot! It was hard to figure out how to get a foothold and figure out what was going on. So, I got in the car, and I drove and visited,” said Zogry. “I saw everything from really strong practice to folks who were just getting a fee app to stand there in the courtroom.”
The first order of business for Zogry was to launch the first juvenile training offerings with the UNC School of Government.
He formed a Juvenile Committee to help focus the work of the office, and with their hard work drafted the Statement of the Role of Defense Counsel, which maintains that the youth defense counsel is to practice “expressed interest advocacy—” not guardian ad litem, and not “best interest advocacy.”
Zogry said, “This (expressed interest advocacy) is the guiding principle to this day. You are the child’s attorney. You work your defense from the Child’s position. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but this was a foreign concept in some places because there was no training and no technical support and no central philosophy. You don’t necessarily go to law school expecting to do this work… If you go to law school and you take criminal law, no one has to explain to you what your job is. But in this court, ever since the U.S. Supreme Court case In re Gault in 1967 determined the right to counsel was constitutionally mandated, there wasn’t a clear definition of our role.”
To date, Zogry and his team have assisted on thousands of cases, including the U.S. Supreme Court Case JDB v. NC, which held that age must be considered when determining whether someone is in custody. OJD also helped drive the “Raise the Age” legislation that was a substantive law. Passed in 2017 and effective in 2019, this was a game changer as it raised the age from 16 to 18 for youth who had committed crimes to be charged as adults.
OJD has also been fortunate to receive grant funding from both the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Governor’s Crime Commission. These resources paved the way for the OJD to expand its reach and establish support systems in three main regions in the state. The goal is to ensure attorneys who practice youth defense in underserved and remote areas—everywhere—have access to quality training and support.
Juvenile Delinquency Law is complicated. When asked, “Why juvenile work?” Zogry said that the most gratifying thing about youth defense is that there are some kids who go to court once and then move on from the experience to lead happy, productive lives.
“In juvenile defense, there are no juries, no death penalty, and there are literally 100 different systems of justice (in that each county runs court in unique, different ways),” said Zogry.
“Has it ever been shown that punitive measures have ever led to a desistence in committing crimes? No,” he continued. “The kid that is before you now is not the kid who is going to be in front of you even weeks away, let alone months or years. That is the whole reason why we have a separate system; it is because the idea is that they can grow and change. We’ve known this because the brain is still growing.”
Now, with full support from the IDS Commission, Zogry and his team are now working to implement the “Juvenile First-Degree Murder Project” that would create rosters of private attorneys from all over North Carolina, who are qualified to represent youth aged 13 to 17 charged with first degree murder and potentially facing life without parole. This will hopefully provide stable and capable defenders for these most difficult of cases.
Upon reflection and meeting the career milestone of 25 years of service as a defender, Zogry had this to say, “Here’s the legacy: You know you’ve succeeded when the work continues and improves, well after you are gone, and no one asks for a medal or award. I think it was Dean Smith who once said something like, ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish when no one is worried about taking credit.’ Our team is good at this.”
“But I still want some credit,” he said with a wink.