A UNC School of Government Blog
The court of appeals decided State v. Howard earlier this week. The opinion addresses several issues, but I want to focus on what is sometimes called the connected crimes doctrine, which allows the state to introduce evidence of uncharged crimes closely related to a charged offense notwithstanding Rule 404(b)’s limitations on evidence of uncharged bad … Read more
In a post here, I wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 131 S. Ct. 2705 (2011), holding that substitute analyst testimony in an impaired driving case violated Crawford. Bullcoming was no great surprise in light of the Court’s prior decision in Melendez-Diaz. However, less than one week after the … Read more
Sometimes the state wants to introduce evidence that the defendant invoked his right to remain silent or his right to counsel under Miranda. If the prosecution’s purpose is simply to imply the defendant’s guilt, we know that’s improper from Miranda itself: “In accord with our decision today, it is impermissible to penalize an individual for … Read more
On June 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bullcoming v. New Mexico. As anticipated, the case turned out to be a straightforward application of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. __, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009) (forensic laboratory reports are testimonial; absent a stipulation, the prosecution may not introduce such a report without a live witness … Read more
It is conference season again at the School of Government, which means that we are doing a lot of presentations for a lot of different groups in the court system. It also means that to get ready we have to learn about new areas of law or at least areas of law we had not … Read more
The usual way for the State to establish that a person drove while impaired under the per se prong of G.S. 20-138.1 is to introduce the results of a chemical analysis demonstrating that the person had an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more at any relevant time after the driving. Not only are the results … Read more
The North Carolina Supreme Court held in State v. Ward, 364 N.C. 133 (2010) (discussed here), that the trial court abused its discretion by permitting an expert chemist to identify pills as controlled substances based solely on a visual inspection and comparison with medical literature, as this methodology was not sufficiently reliable pursuant to Rule … Read more
In my first two posts, I explored the Bryant opinions. Today I’ll discuss what the case means for confrontation clause analysis going forward. 1. Although Crawford is intact, the Court may be creeping back towards the old Ohio v. Roberts reliability test. Slip op. at 14; id. at 15 n.9; Op. of Scalia, J. dissenting … Read more
On February 28, 2011, the United States Supreme Court decided Michigan v. Bryant, its latest Crawford case. In an opinion written by Justice Sotomayor, the Court held that a homicide victim’s statements to responding officers were non-testimonial. In this post, I will explore the majority opinion. In my next post, I will summarize the other … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1345(e), a probationer is entitled at a probation violation hearing to “confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses unless the court finds good cause for not allowing confrontation.” What does that statute mean by confrontation? The statute’s language comes directly from a 1973 case called Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778 (1973), in which the … Read more