Darian Mosley’s sentence for second degree murder was vacated last week because the jury did not specify whether he acted with (1) hatred, ill-will or spite, (2) intentionally and without justification, or (3) a depraved heart when he shot and killed his girlfriend, Amy Parker, in April 2013. The court of appeals held in State v. Mosley that, without knowing the theory of malice that supported the verdict, the trial judge erred in sentencing Mosley as a Class B1 felon. The appellate court remanded the case to the trial court with instructions to sentence Mosley for a Class B2 felony. It also recommended actions for trial courts instructing juries in future murder cases.
Shea Denning
From This Day Forward: Technical Corrections Act Amends Statute of Limitations
While we wait to see what the North Carolina Supreme Court has to say in State v. Turner about the existing statute of limitations for misdemeanors, the General Assembly has amended G.S. 15-1 for future prosecutions.
State v. Thompson Tells a Tale of Two Facebook Screenshots
After Roshawn Thompson picked up his cousin Kendall Rascoe from the Greenville mall in November 2014, Thompson and a friend, Andre Grey, robbed Rascoe at gunpoint. At Thompson’s armed robbery trial, his defense attorney sought to cross examine Rascoe about Facebook messages he sent to Thompson earlier in the day asking whether Thompson could get some marijuana for him while he was in Greenville. Rascoe denied sending the message and testified that he just happened to run into Thompson at the mall. The State objected to the admission of the screenshot of the messages.
Later in the trial, the State sought to introduce a screenshot of a picture of Thompson and Grey copied from Thompson’s Facebook page. Rascoe showed the investigating detective the picture for purposes of identifying Thompson and Grey. Thompson objected to the admission of the screenshot, in which both of his middle fingers were extended.
How did the trial court rule? Did it make the right call?
State v. Huey: Repeatedly Insinuating that the Defendant Was a Liar Was Improper but Not Prejudicial
The North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Huey on Friday, reversing the court of appeals’ determination that the State’s closing argument unfairly prejudiced the defendant in his trial for murder.
Want to Know about Judicial Selection? Learn from the Best.
A group of district court judges gathered at the School last week for a class focused on the establishment of school justice partnerships, a central component of the Raise the Age legislation. The class was productive, but there was an elephant in the room that kept distracting everyone. If you’ve been keeping up with the General Assembly’s work over the past month, you likely can call the elephant by name.
Serial, Cell Site Location Information, and Experts . . . on a Wednesday
It’s not Thursday, but I’m going to throw it back a few years to 2014. Like the rest of the nerds I know, I became obsessed that year with the podcast Serial. The first season of that podcast chronicled the prosecution of Adnan Syed for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Host Sarah Koenig meticulously sifted through the evidence and conducted goodness-knows-how-many interviews with everyone connected to the case, including numerous recorded interviews with Syed, who is serving a life sentence in a Maryland prison. Syed claims that he did not kill Lee, whose body was discovered six weeks after she disappeared buried in a Baltimore park. Koenig spends the first several episodes of the podcast describing inconsistencies in witness’s accounts of the day Lee disappeared—inconsistencies that raise doubts about Syed’s guilt. But in episode five, Koenig, with the help of her producer, analyzes the evidence that the State offered regarding which cell towers serviced calls to Syed’s phone during the time that one of Syed’s friends claimed Syed was burying Lee’s body. The producer concludes:
“I think they were probably in [the park] . . . Because . . . the amount of luck that you would have to have to make up a story like that and then have the cell phone records corroborate those key points, I just don’t think that that’s possible.”
Want a DMV Hearing? Soon, You’ll Have to Pay in Advance.
On Monday, I spoke to a group of DMV hearing officers about administrative order writing. These are the officials who hold hearings to determine whether a person’s driver’s license is subject to revocation or reinstatement. The bases for hearing officer action run the gamut. They exercise discretion in determining whether a person’s license is revoked for accumulating too many driver’s license points or for excessive speeding. They evaluate and weigh evidence to determine whether a person charged with an implied consent offense did, in fact, willfully refuse chemical testing. They hold hearings to determine whether a person whose license has been restored following a DWI has violated a condition of the reinstatement. They also determine whether to conditionally restore the licenses of people convicted of impaired driving before the end of the statutory revocation period.
I can’t say whether the hearing officers learned much from me. But, as is always the case when I interact with a room full of public servants, I learned something from them on Monday. Beginning in January 2018, DMV plans to assess fees for these types of hearings. Some of them are as high as $450.
Office Hours at the Judicial College
Are legal issues keeping you up at night? Have we got a program for you! Let’s talk it out tomorrow during Office Hours at the Judicial College.
NC Supreme Court Evaluates Traffic Stop for Fishtailing in Snow
State v. Johnson, __ N.C. __ (August 18, 2017) opens like a novel:
Defendant was stopped at a red light on a snowy evening. When the light turned green, defendant’s truck abruptly accelerated, turned sharply left, and fishtailed, all in front of a police officer in his patrol car. The officer pulled defendant over for driving at an unsafe speed given the road conditions.
On second thought, maybe this reads more like a bar exam question (or a Dan Fogelberg song).
What say you, barristers? Was the stop lawful?
Restoring the License Restoration Provision for Persons Convicted of Habitual DWI
Legislation enacted by the General Assembly this session again makes it possible for persons convicted of habitual impaired driving to (eventually) have their driving privileges restored.