In August, the North Carolina Supreme Court weighed in on drug identification once again in State v. Osborne, ___ N.C. ___ (August 16, 2019). I wrote about the earlier Court of Appeals decision in the case, here. The new Osborne decision clarifies the application of drug identification rules as well as sufficiency of the evidence in this context.
Evidence
Is a Written Transcript the “Best Evidence” of a Recording?
Shocking videos on sites like Faceboook Live may dominate the headlines (see examples here and here), but criminal attorneys know that the humble, old-fashioned audio recording still plays a large role in many cases. The state’s evidence at trial might include recordings of jail calls, witness interviews, 911 calls, suspect interrogations, wiretap intercepts, controlled buys, incriminating voicemails, and more. To aid in presenting that evidence to the jury (especially when the quality or volume of the recording is less than ideal), some prosecutors also prepare and introduce a written transcript of what was said on the tape.
That raises a tough question: Does the introduction of a transcript of an audio recording run afoul of the “best evidence” rule? There are cases that go both ways on this issue, and at first glance the rule seems to be something along the lines of “it is a violation, except when it isn’t, and sometimes maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Let’s try to clean that up a little.
Court of Appeals Considers Propriety of Opinion Testimony Based on Crash Scene Investigation
May a law enforcement officer who personally investigates, but does not observe, a vehicle crash testify as to his opinion about who was driving the vehicle? Does the answer depend upon whether the officer is qualified as an expert in accident reconstruction? The court of appeals considered those questions in State v. Denton, ___ N.C. App. ___ (June 4, 2019), decided yesterday.
The Statutory Law of Self-Defense in North Carolina
Several years ago (some might say that’s an understatement) I wrote The Law of Self-Defense in North Carolina, in which I looked at over 200 years’ worth of North Carolina court opinions on self-defense and related defenses, such as defense of others and defense of habitation. The book’s approach reflected that North Carolina was a common law state when it came to self-defense. The right to act in self-defense depended primarily on the authority of court decisions. The General Assembly’s adoption in 2011 of three defensive force statutes—G.S. 14-51.2, G.S. 14-51.3, and G.S. 14-51.4—changed that. An understanding of the law of self-defense in North Carolina now must begin with the statutory law of self-defense.
Rules 803(7) and 803(10): Absence of Records
Let’s start with a brainteaser:
If there are no North Carolina criminal appellate cases citing to Rules of Evidence 803(7) or 803(10), does that prove that the rules are never used?
If you know your rules of evidence, then you get it. (You’re probably not that amused… but you get it.) If you need a quick refresher on these two rules, or an explanation of why it would be surprising that there are virtually no criminal appellate cases mentioning either of them, read on.
Emojis in Court
Love them or hate them, it looks like “emojis” are here to stay. As of this writing, more than 3,000 emojis have been officially recognized, standardized, and named by the Unicode Consortium (a group that cares very deeply about emojis, among other things) and they have been adopted for widespread use on cell phones, tablets, email clients, and social media platforms.
Emojis now exist as a way to succinctly express everything from the ordinary and familiar ( 
smiling face; 
thumbs-up) to the surprisingly specific (
mountain cableway; 
moon viewing ceremony) to the routinely misunderstood (
not “angry” but rather “persevering face;” 
not “shooting star” but rather “dizzy”), to the criminally repurposed (
snowflake to mean cocaine; 
rocket to mean high drug potency).
The explosive growth of this alternative form of communication is raising some interesting questions for criminal attorneys and the court system as a whole. Should emojis be considered “statements,” on equal footing with written or spoken words? If they’re not statements, then what are they? Who decides what is meant by the use of a particular emoji? Do they have to be published to the jury and included in the record as images, or can they be summarized and described by words? What should practitioners do to make sure that emojis are accurately reflected in transcripts, court orders, and appellate opinions, since many court systems are text-based and do not allow for the inclusion of images?
Let’s 
about it.
Part 2: Double Jeopardy and Beyond
For our last official criminal justice class, we heard from five more teams of students about their research projects. (At the students’ request, we also scheduled an extra evening session to watch the third best movie ever made about the law and lawyers—answer at the end of this post.) Once again, the students worked on a wide range of topics and, once again, I learned from the students. Here are some quick takeaways along with a brief discussion of one of the topics—double jeopardy, or more accurately, the absence of double jeopardy protections in the UK.
Part 1: Policing, DNA, Mental Health, and Rehabilitation
What do the topics in the title of this blog post have in common? They were the focus of the students’ criminal justice presentations this week. Nine teams of students, two on each team, have been researching and preparing their presentations throughout the semester. Here are some of my takeaways from the first set of presentations.
Sherlock Holmes and Modern Forensics
My recent criminal justice class involved forensics so, being in London, it seemed only fitting to take a look at Sherlock Holmes and his methods. What was the impact of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character on the development of forensics? What can we learn from Holmes more than 130 years after his first appearance in the classic A Study in Scarlet?