Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (July 16, 2025)

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on July 16, 2025.

The law of the other state governs whether a juvenile adjudication from that state is a final conviction that requires registration in North Carolina.

State v. Jackson, No. COA24-731 (N.C. Ct. App. July 16, 2025). [This summary was updated August 4, 2025, after the opinion was reissued.] The defendant was placed on Delaware’s sex offender registry in 2008, when he was 15 years old, based on a juvenile adjudication of delinquency for first-degree rape. When he moved to North Carolina in 2022, he was notified that he was required to register as a sex offender. He filed a Petition for Judicial Determination of Sex Offender Registration under G.S. 14-208.12B. He argued that the Delaware adjudication did not qualify as a reportable conviction, because he would not be required to register on the adult registry for a comparable North Carolina juvenile adjudication. The trial court disagreed. It found that the Delaware juvenile adjudication was substantially similar to first-degree statutory sexual offense in North Carolina and ordered registration on North Carolina’s adult registry.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s order, holding that the defendant was required to register pursuant to G.S. 14-208.6(4)(b), which states that a person must register in North Carolina for a “final conviction in another state of an offense that requires registration under the sex offender registration statutes of that state.” The court read that statute to require application of the law of the other state, Delaware, to determine whether the defendant’s adjudication qualified as a “final conviction.” Because a juvenile adjudication is included within the term “conviction” under Delaware law (which the court concluded overrides North Carolina G.S. 7B-2412, barring juvenile adjudications from being treated as convictions), it requires registration in North Carolina under G.S .14-208.6(4)(b).

The court declined to apply the rule from State v. Melton, 371 N.C. 750 (2018), rejecting reliance on other states’ laws to resolve interpretive disputes, because the question here is not one of interpretive disparity, but rather one of which state’s law applies. Finally, the court rejected the defendant’s appeal to the rule of lenity, concluding that the text of G.S. 14-208.6(4) is unambiguous, and the rule of lenity therefore does not apply.

Trial court erred by admitting drug recognition expert opinion that was based on procedures outside of DRE protocol, but the error was not prejudicial; no error to admit the defendant’s driving record as evidence of malice to prove second-degree murder.

State v. Moore, No. COA24-899 (N.C. Ct. App. July 16, 2025). The defendant’s car collided with a car in which the victim was riding, killing her. He was charged with second-degree murder, felony death by vehicle, and impaired driving, among other charges, after evidence showed that he was driving over 60 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone, and that he was under the influence of impairing substances including amphetamines, benzodiazepines, and opiates. Multiple witnesses testified at trial, including a sergeant from the Sheriff’s Office who testified as a drug recognition expert (DRE) that multiple drugs were causing defendant’s impairment—though his testimony was based on video evidence and reports reviewed two years after the incident, not based on live interaction with the defendant at the time of the incident, as required by DRE protocol. The defendant asserted two arguments on appeal: first, that the trial court erred by allowing the DRE to testify without satisfying the reliability provisions of Rule of Evidence 702(a); and second, that the trial court erred by allowing the state to introduce the defendant’s driving record without conducting a similarity analysis under Rule 404(b). The Court of Appeals concluded there was no prejudicial error.

As to the first argument, the Court of Appeals agreed that the trial court erred by allowing the DRE to express an expert opinion as to the defendant’s impairment without having performed a standardized evaluation in accordance with certification procedures. The court rejected the State’s argument that the “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law” clause in Rule 702(a1) completely excused the DRE from the baseline reliability requirements of Rule 702(a), including the requirements that testimony be based on fact and in accordance with reliable principles and methods. The court nevertheless concluded that the trial court error was not prejudicial based on other overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s impairment separate and apart from the DRE testimony, including witness observations, testimony from the treating physician, and toxicology tests.

As to the second argument, the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court did weigh the similarity and temporal proximity of the defendant’s prior traffic violations as required under cases interpreting Rule 404(b), and therefore did not err by admitting the driving record to prove malice. The trial court limited temporal proximity by disregarding citations prior to 2015. And the similarity between prior speeding citations and the instant crime, where the defendant was speeding at nearly twice the legal limit, was clear, even if the trial court did not explicitly verbalize it.

No error in denial of motion for post-conviction discovery when evidence was potentially favorable but not material in light of the ample evidence presented at trial.

State v. Cataldo, No. COA24-855 (N.C. Ct. App. July 16, 2025). In 2013, the defendant was convicted after a jury trial of two counts of statutory sexual offense and one count of statutory rape. That conviction was affirmed on direct appeal. State v. Cataldo, 234 N.C. App. 329 (2014) (Cataldo I). In 2015, he filed a motion for post-conviction discovery pursuant to Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39 (1987), which was denied. In an unpublished decision, the Court of Appeals reversed that denial and ordered the trial court to conduct an in camera review of Department of Social Services (DSS) records regarding the victim’s allegations of prior abuse, to determine whether they contained material evidence and whether their exclusion prejudiced the defendant’s case. State v. Cataldo, 261 N.C. App. 538 (2018) (unpublished) (Cataldo II). The trial court gathered the pertinent DSS records and concluded that the defendant was not entitled to them because there was not a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been different had he been able to access them. The defendant appealed and the Court of Appeals again reversed, holding that the trial court’s review was impermissibly narrow as to relevant times and persons. State v. Cataldo, 281 N.C. App. 425 (2022) (Cataldo III). After another in camera review of the records—the subject of this appeal—the trial court again denied the motion for post-conviction discovery. The trial court concluded that the records may have been favorable to the defendant in that they potentially adversely affected the victim’s credibility, but they were not material, in that there was no reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different even had he been allowed access.

After granting the defendant’s petition for writ of certiorari, the Court of Appeals found no error in the trial court’s denial of the motion for post-conviction discovery. The appellate court conducted a de novo review of all the sealed records and concluded that there was “a single instance which potentially may have tended to impeach the credibility of [the victim].” Slip op. at 7. However, the court went on to conclude that there was no reasonable probability that anything in the records would, even if disclosed to the defendant, have changed the result of the proceedings in light of the ample evidence of the defendant’s guilt presented at trial. The records were therefore not “material,” and therefore did not require disclosure under Ritchie, which only requires disclosure of evidence that is both favorable and material to the defendant’s guilt or punishment.