RALEIGH, N.C. - s4story -- NORTH CAROLINA.

A retired U.S. Army Major who served ten combat deployments and is 100% service-connected disabled with severe PTSD is fighting back after spending 27 years in a North Carolina court system that, according to filed complaints, never applied the federal protections Congress enacted to shield servicemembers from civil abuse while they serve.

MAJ (RET) Hutchinson enlisted in 1994 and deployed to combat zones including Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, retiring in 2019 with a full disability rating. According to complaints filed in Carteret County and federal court, a child support case was initiated against him in 1999 while he was stationed overseas on military orders — meaning, under military law, New York, not North Carolina, held jurisdiction. He says he has never lived in Carteret County, the county where the case was prosecuted for nearly three decades.

The complaints allege the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) — federal law binding on every state court under the Supremacy Clause — was never applied: no military status affidavit, no appointed counsel, no protective bond, no stay of proceedings, in 27 years. In 2009, while Hutchinson was deployed at war with no notice, a default judgment was entered against him, followed by military pay garnishment through DFAS. In 2017, after his attorney withdrew the morning of a hearing, a judge held him in criminal contempt and jailed him for statements the complaint says do not fit the state's statutory grounds for contempt.

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Two North Carolina rulings, Hutchinson's complaints note, lend support to his claims: the Court of Appeals reversed the same judge for an identical contempt sentence in a separate case, and the state Supreme Court has publicly reprimanded another judge for ignoring an SCRA stay request.

Hutchinson has filed judicial misconduct complaints against seven judges and bar complaints against five attorneys, and has refiled a federal civil rights lawsuit in the Eastern District of North Carolina seeking damages and a jury trial. He says the judge who is now senior judge in the district is the same one who imprisoned him in 2017, leaving him without a neutral venue.

"I served this nation through ten combat deployments," Hutchinson said. "I came home 100% disabled with severe PTSD from that service. And while I was overseas defending this country, a court system back home was manufacturing jurisdiction in a county where I never lived — concealing every federal protection Congress wrote to keep this from happening."

"All I am asking for is what every American is entitled to — a proper and fair day in court before a neutral judge."

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Editor's Note: The prior federal case (4:18-cv-00187-D) was dismissed without prejudice in 2025 on service-of-process grounds and has been refiled with proper service.

Case References: State File No. 99-CVD-142, Carteret County District Court, Beaufort, NC. Federal Case No. 4:18-cv-00187-D, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina.

Documents available upon request: Federal Amended Complaint with exhibits; judicial misconduct and bar complaints; Notice of Jurisdictional Freeze; correspondence to the NC Administrative Office of the Courts and Chief Justice.

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