North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The facts. A detective with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department writes a plan for a checkpoint to be conducted later in the evening. The plan states that the checkpoint will be established at the intersection of Ashley Road and Joy Street in Charlotte, NC. The plan states that the checkpoint’s purpose is to increase police presence in the targeted area while checking for driver’s license and vehicle registration violations. The plan further states that all vehicles traveling through the checkpoint must be stopped unless the officer in charge determines that a hazard has developed or an unreasonable delay is occurring. If that situation arises, all vehicles must be allowed to pass through until the hazard or delay is cleared.

The checkpoint is conducted from 12:34 a.m. to 1:52 a.m. on the designated evening. Every vehicle that travels through the checkpoint is stopped, and the officers ask every driver for his or her driver’s license.

The question. A passenger in a car stopped at the checkpoint moves to suppress evidence obtained during the stop and subsequent search of the car, alleging that the checkpoint was unconstitutional.

If you were the court, how would you rule? 

Myra Lynne Combs beat her DWI charges in court. The trial court held that the officer who stopped her didn’t have a lawful reason to do so. So the trial court suppressed all the evidence resulting from the stop, and the State dismissed the charges. But Combs’ license was revoked for a year anyway based on her refusal to submit to a breath test after she was arrested. Combs didn’t think that was right, so she took her case to the state court of appeals.

One of the first bills introduced in 2015 legislative session (House Bill 6) defines a new type of passenger vehicle that is part-car, part-motorcycle—the autocycle. 

I’ve recently updated my paper on traffic stops. As before, it covers stops from start to finish, including the legal standard for making a stop, the length of a stop, […]

A traffic stop is valid if it is supported by reasonable suspicion. During a valid traffic stop, an officer may demand the driver’s license and registration, may run a computer check based on those documents, and so on. But what if the reasonable suspicion supporting the stop dissipates soon after the stop is made?

DWI arrests in North Carolina’s capital city are on the rise. The Wake County district attorney’s office expects to prosecute around 7,000 DWI cases this fiscal year—2,000 more than it handled in 2013-14.  The increased arrests result from beefed up patrol activity made possible by federal grants. And there is some speculation that the decline in fatal alcohol-related accidents in Raleigh from the previous year may be related to the additional arrests. Yet people continue to drive while impaired in Raleigh and elsewhere in North Carolina, sometimes with tragic consequences. And every DWI charge adds a court case to an already crowded district court docket. I wonder: Can we prosecute away the risks posed by impaired drivers?

The 2015 North Carolina General Assembly convened earlier today, with new members sliding into place just as the first ice storm of the winter left the area. And while most folks’ attention will (as usual) be focused on the state budget, I’ll be watching over the next few months for legislation related to motor vehicle crimes. I’m particularly curious to see whether the General Assembly shows any interest in interrupting the cycle of driver’s license revocation, an issue that lately has attracted national attention.

In opinions spanning four decades, North Carolina’s appellate courts have suppressed chemical analysis results in impaired driving cases based on statutory violations related to their administration. When the violation consists of the State’s failure to advise a defendant of her implied consent rights, the appellate courts’ jurisprudence has been straightforward and consistent: The results of an implied consent test carried out without the defendant having first been advised of her implied consent rights are inadmissible. Indeed, the court of appeals reaffirmed that principle last June in State v. Williams, __ N.C. App. ___, 759 S.E.2d 350 (2014), holding that the State’s failure to re-advise the defendant of his implied consent rights before conducting a blood test under the implied consent statutes required suppression of the test results. A court of appeals opinion issued in the waning hours of 2014 indicates, however, that the rule is subject to at least one exception.

Author’s note:  The law was amended in 2015 to alter this analysis.  The amendments are discussed here.

Grossly aggravating factors matter in DWI sentencing.  And there’s one factor that seems to be confusing folks, particularly when it comes to ignition interlock violations. Here’s hoping this post clears it up.

Shea blogged here about State v. Heien, the case in which the court of appeals ruled that having one burned-out brake light was not a violation of G.S. 20-129 and so did not support a vehicle stop. (The stop led to a consent search of the defendant’s vehicle, which led to the discovery of drugs and to drug trafficking charges.) The prosecution sought review in the state supreme court. That court assumed that the court of appeals was correct about the scope of the statute but determined (1) that an officer might reasonably think otherwise, given ambiguities in the statute, and (2) that reasonable suspicion may be based on a reasonable mistake of law. Conclusion (2) was the subject of a split of authority across the country, so the United States Supreme Court agreed to review the case. It issued its opinion yesterday.