Before I became a lawyer, I finished everything ahead of time. Term paper? Completed two weeks early. Trip? Packed a week in advance. Taxes? Filed in February. Alas, those days are nearly two decades behind me. Now I squeak in just under the wire with everything I do—including my weekly blog posts. I could proffer a host of reasons, but don’t think I need to so long as I meet the deadline. My modus operandi may explain why I was particularly troubled by the traffic stop in State v. Baskins, ___ N.C. App. ___ (May 17, 2016).
Motor Vehicles
A political science professor, a civil rights lawyer and a police chief walk into a classroom . . .
I haven’t figured out the punch line to this joke. It was my opening line for a traffic stops session taught last month in the special topics seminar, Race Issues in the Courts, by UNC Professor Frank Baumgartner, Southern Coalition for Social Justice Staff Attorney Ian Mance, and Fayetteville Police Chief Harold Medlock. One reason that it is hard to finish the joke is that these three were on the same page, which is somewhat surprising given the roles they occupy.
I immediately thought of that talk yesterday when I saw this News and Observer photograph of United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch standing next to Chief Medlock. Lynch traveled to Fayetteville as part of her nationwide community policing tour. She chose Fayetteville in part because of the work the presenters discussed at our April conference.
Blanket Objection by State to Fact-Findings Sufficient to Trigger De Novo Review in DWI Case
If you decide to read yesterday’s court of appeals opinion in State v. Miller, ___ N.C. App. ___ (May 17, 2016) do yourself a favor and skip to page 9. Not having the benefit of this advice, I got lost on page 3. At first, I thought my printer had malfunctioned, since page 3 seemed to be saying the same thing as page 2. But there’s no problem with my printer. I can’t say the same for the procedural history in this case. Tortured is not a sufficiently negative adjective to describe its path. Fortunately, things pick up half way through the opinion and an important rule emerges: The State may obtain a de novo hearing in superior court under G.S. 20-38.7(a) without setting forth the specific findings of fact to which it objects.
So that’s the rule. Unless the senior resident superior court judge says otherwise. You’re going to have to read the rest of this post to make sense of that.
Court of Appeals Rules That Officer Had Reasonable Suspicion to Extend Traffic Stop
Jeff Welty in his post here yesterday discussed last week’s North Carolina Court of Appeals ruling in State v. Bedient. Today, I will discuss another ruling decided on the same day: State v. Castillo. Both cases are post-Rodriguez cases with different outcomes, with Bedient resulting in a ruling for the defendant and Castillo a ruling for the State.
Court of Appeals Finds Extension of Traffic Stop Unsupported by Reasonable Suspicion
Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Bedient, a significant post-Rodriguez opinion on traffic stops. The court ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to extend a stop by a few seconds to ask the driver for consent to search. This post summarizes and analyzes the case.
Only Experts Can Testify About HGN
Author’s note: I added the conclusory paragraph at the end of this post shortly after its initial publication in response to helpful questions from readers about the significance of State v. Godwin and State v. Torrence.
Like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, horizontal gaze nystagmus is a mouthful. Unlike Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, not just anyone can utter horizontal gaze nystagmus and sound wise beyond her years. Two recent court of appeals opinions hold that that a witness be qualified as an expert before testifying about the results of a horizontal gaze nystagmus test.
Warrant Required for Testing of Unconscious DWI Suspect
The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning in three cases involving the chemical testing of impaired drivers. The question before the court in each case is whether, in the absence of a warrant, a state may make it a crime for a person to refuse to take a chemical test to detect the presence of alcohol in the person’s blood. I’m eager to hear what the high court has to say about this issue and to learn whether it will impact North Carolina’s implied consent laws, which, like the laws in every other state, do provide for warrantless chemical testing, but which do not criminalize refusal to be tested. But we don’t have to wait for the Supreme Court’s opinion to see how our state’s implied consent laws are evolving in a post-Missouri v. McNeely world. The North Carolina Court of Appeals decided a significant case yesterday, ruling in State v. Romano, __ N.C. App. ___ (2016), that the warrantless withdrawal of blood from an unconscious impaired driving suspect violated the Fourth Amendment, notwithstanding a state statute that permits such actions.
Fix It and Forget It—Without Making a Trip to the Courthouse
A few years ago, my babysitter texted me that she was going to be late because she had been pulled over by a police officer on the way to our house. When she arrived, I was in full-on substitute parent and attorney mode. Are you okay, I asked? What happened? She was nonplussed by the whole affair. Her registration had expired a few months before. She hadn’t noticed. The officer explained that if she renewed her registration and provided proof of that to the assistant district attorney on her court date, the charges would be dismissed. Oh, I said (slightly deflated that she needed absolutely no input from me—a so-called expert). But she did have to go to court to clear all this up. And that required parking in downtown Raleigh on a weekday, finding her way to the appropriate courtroom and standing in line to pay her ticket. A new procedure, soon to be rolled out statewide by the Administrative Office of the Courts, will do away with this last step, preventing hundreds of thousands of citizens from having to appear in court to have their motor vehicle law charges dismissed upon proof of compliance with the law.
State v. Miller Confirms that the DWI Motions Statutes are a Hot Mess
No, Justice Ervin didn’t use the words hot mess. But anyone who slogs their way through the tortured procedural swamp that led to State v. Miller, __ N.C. __ (March 18, 2016), is bound to agree that the procedures adopted in 2006 for appeals in DWI cases have created a nearly impenetrable bog for the parties involved. I’m going to do my best here to succinctly explain what happened in Miller. Then I’ll share an idea for freeing litigants and judges from the procedural muck in which they are currently mired.