Martelle Once Sentenced District Court Judge Challenger LaBreche for a DWI

Early voting for the Rutherford and McDowell County District Court judge primary begins Feb. 12. The race features incumbent Robert Martelle and challenger Andrew LaBreche.

Court records show that in 2017, LaBreche was cited for a low-level driving while impaired (DWI) charge by the NC State Highway Patrol. The case was sentenced by Martelle, with all fines and court obligations resolved. In 2018, LaBreche also pleaded guilty to driving with a revoked license; all penalties were paid, and a prayer for judgment was continued.

In their debate last month, Martelle suggested that rehab options were available to attorneys who needed them, without elaborating further or directly mentioning the case. 

LaBreche stated on Feb. 6 about his past legal record: "Over the past several days, it has become clear that my opponent intends to justify his silence during a period of profound judicial failure — and during this election — by pointing to an unrelated driving while impaired (“DUI”) case from nearly a decade ago. That framing is misplaced.

A single, resolved DUI — in which responsibility was acknowledged and the law was applied — is not comparable to the sustained failure of a judicial system that allowed a sitting judge to trade legal outcomes for sexual access, inflicted lasting harm on families and children, and left tainted judgments unexamined and uncorrected. It is also not comparable to documented instances in which judicial authority was misused, law-enforcement resources were improperly deployed, and serious allegations were never meaningfully reviewed. Accountability matters, and the law must apply equally to everyone.

In 2017, I slid off the road near Cleghorn, was cited for a DUI, accepted responsibility, complied fully with the court’s judgment, and did not ask for or receive any special treatment. That is how the justice system is supposed to work.

What I have documented is something very different: a pattern, spanning decades, in which the law did not apply equally — or at all — to certain officials in this district, and the real damage that resulted from that failure.

Personal attacks and deflection do not erase public records, witness accounts, corroborated findings, or documented institutional breakdowns. Ignoring the record by attacking the messenger is precisely how the failures I’ve written about were allowed to persist.

My focus remains on confronting those failures and restoring integrity, accountability, and trust in our courts. Silence in the face of a judicial crisis is not neutrality — it is a choice — and voters are entitled to weigh that record."

Martelle has not issued a public statement regarding the matter directly and has emphasized his judicial experience with NC Courts programs, with much of the campaign messaging coming from his supporters. 

LaBreche has taken an untraditional approach to the campaign, as he has been documenting his historical observations with public records in a book with over thirty chapters, which he's published on social media and a website. 

The primary election is March 3, 2026, with early voting beginning on Feb. 12. Visit the state board of elections website for more details about your polling location.