Background
Ali Sandi and Haniyeh Khodaverdian, Iranian nationals who immigrated to Alamance County in 2012, were married with two children: a teenage son and a six-year-old daughter. On May 13, 2020, Sandi told Haniyeh he wanted a divorce and demanded she sign away all property rights. When she refused to surrender their daughter’s passport the next morning, he struck and pulled her hair. That afternoon, after she asked him to quiet an argument he was having with their son, Sandi pushed Haniyeh onto a bed and strangled her until their son struck Sandi from behind with an object, causing him to release her.
Shortly afterward, Haniyeh heard their son warn that Sandi had a knife. Haniyeh and her daughter tried to hold the bedroom door shut; Sandi forced it open by punching and kicking it. Once inside, he trapped Haniyeh in the corner between the door and a dresser, blocked her exit with the knife, and repeatedly stabbed her while saying “I kill you.” Their son intervened by grabbing Sandi and urging Haniyeh to flee. She escaped to a neighbor’s home and called 911. After a prolonged struggle, police subdued and arrested Sandi. Haniyeh was documented with multiple stab wounds, bruising, petechial hemorrhaging, and neck trauma consistent with strangulation.
Sandi was convicted after a February 2024 trial of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, assault by strangulation, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury (AWDWIKISI), assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with a minor present, and misdemeanor child abuse. He was sentenced to 323–432 months in consecutive aggravated judgments. He appealed on three grounds: (1) the trial court erred by denying a mistrial based on the interpreter’s conduct; (2) insufficient evidence of first-degree kidnapping; and (3) insufficient evidence of misdemeanor child abuse.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals (Murry, J., joined by Dillon, C.J.; Hampson, J., concurring in result with separate analysis) found no error on any ground.
Mistrial based on interpreter conduct. Because Sandi and Haniyeh are both native Farsi speakers, the trial court appointed a Farsi interpreter for Haniyeh after Sandi declined the court’s offer of an interpreter for himself. Defense counsel objected during trial to four aspects of the interpreter’s performance: (1) mimicking Haniyeh’s stabbing hand motion while translating her testimony about the attack; (2) selecting among multiple possible English words based on the interpreter’s own experience rather than seeking the court’s guidance; (3) briefly mistranslating “knife” as “gun” before immediately correcting himself; and (4) repeating the word “go” twice when Haniyeh said it once. Sandi moved for a mistrial on the ground that these violations of the Administrative Office of the Courts’ Standards for Language Access Services demonstrated “bias” and deprived him of a fair trial.
The Court of Appeals held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the mistrial. The court examined the legal status of the AOC Standards at length and held that they are administrative guidelines promulgated under the trial court’s inherent power to manage court proceedings, not legislative regulations that create enforceable legal rights in criminal defendants. Although egregious “translation difficulties” could theoretically violate a non-English-speaking defendant’s right to a fair trial (citing State v. Uvalle, 151 N.C. App. 446 (2002)), Sandi identified no statute or binding rule that converts an AOC Standards violation into a constitutionally cognizable claim. Accordingly, the Court reviewed the trial court’s denial of the mistrial for abuse of discretion only.
On the facts, the trial court’s denial was well within its discretion. The court promptly corrected the brief “knife/gun” mistranslation in front of the jury; the word repetition and word-choice issues were found innocuous; and the interpreter’s mimicking of the stabbing gesture, while concerning, was cured when Haniyeh physically demonstrated the stabbing herself moments later — without the interpreter mimicking her. The trial court had also offered a limiting instruction, which Sandi strategically declined to avoid drawing further attention to the conduct. Having made careful on-the-record findings, the trial court did not act arbitrarily or in a manner manifestly unsupported by reason.
Misdemeanor child abuse — sufficient evidence. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-318.2(a), a parent commits misdemeanor child abuse by creating a “substantial risk of physical injury” to a child under sixteen “by other than accidental means.” Sandi argued the State presented no evidence that Daughter — approximately six years old — faced such a risk during his assault of Haniyeh. The court disagreed. Drawing on State v. Watkins, 247 N.C. App. 391 (2016) and State v. Adams, 285 N.C. App. 379 (2022), the court confirmed that actual injury to the child, long duration of exposure, and specific intent to harm the child are not required; the inquiry is whether the defendant intentionally engaged in conduct that exposed the child to a substantial risk. Here, Daughter was in the bedroom when Sandi strangled Haniyeh (waking the child), tried to hold the door shut against Sandi with her mother, and was present in the room when Sandi entered armed with a knife and repeatedly stabbed Haniyeh. A reasonable juror could conclude that Daughter’s proximity to an armed, violent attack placed her at substantial risk of physical injury.
First-degree kidnapping — sufficient evidence and double jeopardy. Sandi’s challenge ran on two tracks. First, on sufficiency: he argued the State offered “no evidence of confinement, restraint, or removal separate from any which was inherent in the assaults and attempted murder.” The court had no difficulty finding sufficient evidence — trapping Haniyeh in the corner of the bedroom between a door and a dresser while wielding a knife, blocking her access to the exit, constitutes confinement “without consent” “for the purpose of doing serious bodily harm.”
Second, on double jeopardy: Sandi argued that punishing him separately for kidnapping and for AWDWIKISI, assault by strangulation, and attempted first-degree murder was unconstitutional because any restraint was inherent in those other offenses. Under State v. Fulcher, 294 N.C. 503 (1978), a restraint that is “an inherent, inevitable feature” of another felony cannot also support a separate kidnapping conviction. But the court held that the restraint here was not inherent in Sandi’s other convictions. Citing State v. Carrillo, 115 N.C. App. 674 (2018), the court noted that AWDWIKISI “may be committed without ever necessitating the restraint or confining the victim.” Similarly, assault by strangulation has no statutory element of restraint beyond the act of strangulation itself. The court further held that attempted first-degree murder falls outside the “inherent restraint” class of offenses because none of its elements require confinement or restraint. Because the confinement of Haniyeh in the bedroom corner was a distinct act separate and apart from what was required to commit the other offenses, the kidnapping conviction did not violate double jeopardy. (The court noted this argument was also unpreserved for failure to move to arrest judgment at sentencing, but addressed it on the merits anyway.)
Key Takeaways
- The AOC’s Standards for Language Access Services are administrative guidelines promulgated under the trial court’s inherent power to manage court proceedings; they do not create enforceable legal rights in criminal defendants, and a violation of those Standards does not automatically entitle a defendant to a mistrial or trigger de novo constitutional review.
- The trial court’s assessment of an interpreter’s compliance with the AOC Standards and its decision on a related mistrial motion are governed by the abuse-of-discretion standard; a court that corrects specific interpretive errors in front of the jury, monitors the interpreter’s subsequent conduct, and offers limiting instructions acts within its discretion even if some conduct was problematic.
- Misdemeanor child abuse under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-318.2(a) can be established by evidence that a parent’s violent attack on another adult — committed in the child’s presence, with a weapon, in close physical proximity to the child — created a substantial risk of physical injury, even where the child was not directly targeted and suffered no actual injury.
- A kidnapping conviction does not violate double jeopardy when the restraint supporting it is a separate act distinct from the inherent elements of accompanying felonies; AWDWIKISI and assault by strangulation are not in the “inherent restraint” class of felonies, and the court strongly implied that attempted first-degree murder is not either. State v. Fulcher, 294 N.C. 503 (1978); State v. China, 370 N.C. 627 (2018).
Why It Matters
The interpreter-standards holding is the most broadly significant aspect of Sandi for NC practitioners. As the use of court-appointed interpreters grows alongside North Carolina’s expanding immigrant population, defense counsel will increasingly encounter situations where an interpreter’s conduct during testimony is imperfect. Sandi makes clear that the AOC’s published Standards — while important for administering language-access services — are internal guidelines, not a source of constitutional entitlements that defendants can invoke to obtain mistrials. The court suggests that only translation difficulties so extreme as to make a fair trial impossible could rise to the level of a constitutional violation, and that the ordinary remedy for interpreter problems is the trial court’s supervision, correction, and instruction — not a mistrial.
The kidnapping and child-abuse holdings are also significant for domestic violence prosecutions. Sandi makes clear that a defendant who corners a domestic violence victim in a room with a weapon commits a separately punishable confinement beyond what is required for the assault charges, and that young children present during a violent attack can themselves be victims of misdemeanor child abuse even if they are not directly targeted and escape without physical injury.