BY MILES LAYTON

My cellphone began beeping Thursday soon after Governor Josh Stein announced that he appointed Jennifer Wells to the District Court for the First Judicial District, serving Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Pasquotank, and Perquimans Counties. Her appointment as judge is not a surprise — her background, well, that’s one things that makes you go hmmm… there’s going to be interesting judicial race ahead. Usually they are pretty boring, often uncontested, but maybe not this time.

Wells is filling the vacancy created after Judge Edgar Barnes retired Jan. 1.  Barnes, who has been serving as a judge since 1995, was elected to another four-year term in November, which was set to expire in 2028. Under state law, a special election will be held for the final two years at the next general election, which is in November 2026.

Side note – Barnes later became chief judge for the First Judicial District when he succeeded Chief Judge Chris Bean of Edenton, who retired in 2014.  

Anyway, following Barnes’ announcement of his plans to retire, First Judicial District Bar Association members recommended candidates for Stein to appoint to that judicial seat. In late December, the Bar held a vote for nominees to succeed Barnes with Wells leading the balloting with 40 votes.  

Wells will serve on the bench through at least 2026. Her salary will be approximately $162,000+ per year.

Wells was one of two new judges who were appointed by the governor on Thursday, with Cameron “Chip” Harrison appointed to the District Court for Judicial District 38, serving Gaston County.

“Given their experience and record as public defenders, I am proud to appoint Jennifer and Cameron to the District Courts,” said Gov. Stein in a press release issued Thursday. “They will be fair and hard-working jurists, and I look forward to their service.”

Beyond the press release

Let’s tell our readers more by providing context about Wells’ background rather than rely on the Governor’s short press release like the state government’s mouthpiece, the mainstream media. 

Party politics shouldn’t matter in a judicial race, but at first glance for the November general election in 2026, it looks like it’ll be a liberal Democrat vs a conservative Republican.  

Since 2014, Wells has worked the past 11 years as an assistant public defender for the First Judicial District. According to Wells’ linkedin profile, she’s represented indigent clients charged with misdemeanors and negotiated plea deals on behalf of clients. 

Among Wells’ many cases serving as Assistant Public Defender, she was one of the attorneys representing John “Jay” Tolson in his second-degree murder trial in the July 2020 death of LeeAnn Fletcher, a 38-year-old mother of two, who was found unresponsive in her Kitty Hawk home.  Tolson was arrested in October of 2020 after an autopsy report revealed that Fletcher’s cause of death was “complications of blunt force trauma to the head with hepatic cirrhosis with clinical hepatic failure contributing.” 

According to the Outer Banks Voice, Tolson was convicted in August of 2023 after the two sides reached a plea agreement that carried a sentence of 56-80 months for voluntary manslaughter. 

Here’s something interesting – during Wells’ second year of law school at Campbell University, she was an intern for the Southern Coalition of Social Justice, according to her Linkedin profile. If you are one of our regular readers, then you know more than a bit about the Southern Coalition of Social Justice. 

The Durham-based Social Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) has represented the Move the Monument Coalition for some time in the ongoing legal battles in the war over the future of the Confederate Memorial in Edenton.  

According to the firm’s website, the SCSJ is “a multidisciplinary group, predominantly people of color, who believed that families and communities engaged in social justice struggles need a team of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers, and media specialists to support them in their efforts to dismantle structural racism and oppression.”

According to Wells’ linkedin profile regarding her time five months working as an intern for the SCSJ, she did these things:

• Compiled and distributed information on Voter Rights and Redistricting; 

• Researched new Voter Identification Laws to determine legality and past Supreme Court precedent; 

• Worked on Title VI claim against Wake County School Board;

• Prepared clemency applications for inmates.

An impressive resume, Wells was an intern in the Wake County Public Defender’s Office also serving an internship with the state Supreme Court as well as the NC Department of Justice.

Flashback: Wells received her B.A. from Tulane University in 2006 and her law degree from Campbell University School of Law in 2012. 

Interesting side note: when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in August of 2005, Tulane University closed during the fall semester, so Wells attended Duke University during the first half of her senior year before returning to Tulane, graduating with a degree in classics and Spanish in 2006.  

While attending Campbell School of Law, Wells was a research assistant for Professor Lisa Lukasik between May and August of 2011. One of the law school’s best professors, Lukasik serves as Director of the Richardson Family Education Law Clinic. 

Last word goes to Alexander Hamilton who explained why separation and an independent judiciary were so important. From Federalist 78 — “The judiciary . . . has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” And, he said: “[A]s liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, [it] would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments”