Latest posts in category Uncategorized on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The trial of the week this week is in Charlotte, where former CMPD officer Randall Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of former college football player Jonathan Ferrell. The case has attracted some national attention, as evidenced by the CNN coverage here, perhaps in part because Kerrick is white and Ferrell was black. The parties disagree about the extent of the danger posed by Ferrell when he ran towards, and made contact with, Kerrick.

Author’s note: The North Carolina Drivers License Restoration Act was enacted in S.L. 2015-186. The Technical Corrections Act, S.L. 2015-264, rewrote the earlier act’s effective date to render it applicable to offenses committed on or after December 1, 2015. Other clarifications made by the Technical Corrections Act are discussed here.

The General Assembly ratified the North Carolina Drivers License Restoration Act last week and submitted it to the Governor. If the act becomes law, it will relieve defendants convicted of certain types of driving while license revoked of the mandatory additional license revocation that has historically followed such convictions. Proponents for a change in the law argued that people convicted of driving while license revoked under current law drove during the revocation period out of necessity and then became locked in an unending cycle of license revocation.

This week, the General Assembly passed H774, which, if signed by the governor or allowed to become law without his signature, would make two significant changes in the administration of the death penalty. Specifically, it would allow a medical professional other than a physician to be present at an execution (current law requires a doctor), and would allow the state to withhold from the public information concerning the identity of any person or entity that supplies the drugs used in lethal injection. WRAL covers the controversy over the bill here. Generally, proponents contend that the changes are needed to allow executions to resume while opponents argue that the bill will simply engender more litigation.

Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. The past year has been dominated by news of encounters between police officers and unarmed black citizens that have resulted in tragedy. Sandra Bland is the latest name on the list. She died in jail from what is reported to be a self-inflicted hanging, but the videotape of the traffic stop that led to her arrest has many questioning why the encounter, which began with an officer stopping Bland for failing to use her turn signal, ever resulted in her arrest.

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the SOG’s civil law blog, On the Civil Side. Nonetheless, given its coverage of Confrontation Clause issues arising from a criminal case, we thought that it would be of interest to many of our readers.]

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ohio v. Clark, 135 S.Ct. 2173 (2015). The Court determined whether a teacher’s testimony of a child’s statements to her was barred by the Confrontation Clause. My colleague, Jessica Smith, wrote a blog post about the holding and its impact in criminal cases. But, what about the world of child protective services?

I was captivated this week by the escape of drug billionaire Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from a maximum-security prison in Mexico. He walked out through a mile-long tunnel that led from his shower to a building beyond prison walls. You can see the inside of the tunnel here. The DEA is saying all the right things but must be just a little miffed about the whole thing, since (1) this is Guzman’s second escape from a Mexican prison, and (2) Mexico denied the United States’ request to extradite Guzman to face charges in the United States, claiming that it was able to ensure his continued confinement.

By coincidence, I recently finished The Cartel, a novel by Don Winslow about Mexico’s war on drugs. It starts with a Sinaloan kingpin’s escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico, so it’s timely and topical. It’s also bloody and riveting.

Sometimes a person who is already incarcerated for one crime needs to be prosecuted for another crime. A surprisingly common question, usually from a sheriff’s office, is who is responsible for getting the defendant-inmate to trial? The county that wants the inmate (the requesting county)? Or the county that has the inmate (the custodial county)?

This week’s roundup is packed full of good stuff, including news about a new member of the court of appeals, information about North Carolina’s leading role in a major law review piece, data on prosecutor diversity, an announcement of a new publication, and more. Check it out!

The highly publicized escape of two murderers from a New York prison came to an end this week as Richard Matt was shot and killed and David Sweat was shot and captured. Sweat has been telling investigators about the escape and has apparently revealed quite a few interesting details. CNN has the latest here. For whatever reason, even our local media paid much less attention to the escape of a murderer from a North Carolina prison last weekend. Like the incident in New York, North Carolina’s escape involved romance between an inmate and a female guard, as WNCN reports here. The escapee has been recaptured.

There were several major criminal law stories this week, none of them especially cheery. Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had his sentencing hearing. The result was not in doubt, as a jury had already returned a death verdict. But the judge spoke, several victims spoke – and the defendant spoke, offering an apology that seemed sincere to some and rang hollow to others. CNN’s extensive coverage of the story is here. Obviously, apologies are better suited for things like hurting another person’s feelings than for things like killing and maiming innocent victims, but I for one am glad that Tsarnaev showed the decency and humanity to express regret.