A UNC School of Government Blog
The court of appeals released a batch of opinions yesterday. Several are interesting and important, and there were an unusually large number of opinions in favor of defendants, including some in very serious cases. One of those is State v. Carter, the court’s first stab at applying Arizona v. Gant — a case about which … Read more
Several recent news items may be of interest to readers of this blog: 1. FBI data shows that violent crimes, and especially homicides, dropped again last year and are now at rates that one expert says haven’t been seen since the 1960s. The FBI’s report is here and the News and Observer‘s story is here. … Read more
Further Update: See Shea Denning’s post here about State v. Mumford, in which the court of appeals held that “logically inconsistent and legally contradictory” verdicts cannot stand. It has the potential to expand significantly the circumstances under which inconsistent verdicts are grounds for a new trial. Update: One more type of inconsistent verdict is the … Read more
I recently completed an Administration of Justice Bulletin on evidentiary issues in sex crimes cases. It’s available for free here. It covers the application of N.C. R. Evid. 412, i.e., the rape shield rule, as well as the application of N.C. Rule Ev. 404(b) as it relates to evidence of prior sexual misconduct by the … Read more
I’m still not done with the last round of court of appeals and North Carolina Supreme Court opinions, but I found a little gem in one of the high court’s opinions. For the first time, the state supreme court has addressed the search of a cell phone incident to arrest. I’ve blogged about this issue … Read more
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachussetts, as most readers of this blog know, is the United States Supreme Court’s latest pronouncement on the Confrontation Clause. Generally, it holds that forensic laboratory reports — like chemical analyses of drugs, DNA tests, and so on — are “testimonial” for Confrontation Clause purposes. That means a laboratory report generally may not … Read more
Last week the court of appeals decided State v. Wagoner, its latest case involving satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Mr. Wagoner, who had previously been convicted of multiple reportable sex crimes in 1996, pled no contest to another one (indecent liberties with a child) in 2005. He received a suspended sentence for the 2005 … Read more
I am constantly amazed at the innovative work my colleagues are doing. A new and incredibly useful tool — but one that is not widely known — is Jessie Smith’s criminal case compendium, available here. It organizes important criminal cases by category, so you can look at the section on indictments if you have an … Read more
Although there’s been a ton of relevant news since the last News Roundup, the most timely and interesting stories all relate to claims of actual innocence. To start with, Joseph Abbitt of Winston-Salem was exonerated yesterday. After serving 14 years for raping two teenage girls — both of whom positively identified him as the perpetrator … Read more
After my earlier post about nonstatutory aggravating factors, a reader took me up on my offer to write about nonstatutory mitigating factors. In addition to the twenty mitigating factors spelled out in G.S. 15A-1340.16(e), the law allows for “any other mitigating factor reasonably related to the purposes of sentences.” Procedurally, nonstatutory mitigating factors are a … Read more