Near the end of last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Taylor, 2021-NCSC-164, 866 S.E.2d 740 (2021), and we summarized the opinion here. This post considers the potential impact of Taylor on other offenses involving threatening speech, and addresses a couple lingering questions that may arise in future cases.
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News Roundup
Emergency response officials and personnel at the state and local level deserve special recognition this week for their handling of the extremely dangerous fire at a fertilizer production facility in Winston-Salem. As the Winston-Salem Journal reports, a massive fire broke out at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant on Monday night, prompting emergency responders to go door-to-door to warn residents within one mile of the site to evacuate their homes because of the possibility that roughly 600 tons of ammonium nitrate could explode and devastate the surrounding area. The threat of an explosion was diminishing at the time of writing. Keep reading for more news.
Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Feb. 1, 2022)
This post summarizes criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on February 1, 2022. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.
SB300 and Early Warning Systems
State law now requires every law enforcement agency to implement an “early warning system.” What is an early warning system? Do such systems work? And what can small agencies do to comply with the law? Read on to learn more.
Hats Off to Newly Certified Magistrates
Begin reading this post by standing up. Remain standing if you have worked in a position that has required you to interact directly and regularly with members of the public during the pandemic. Otherwise, sit down. Remain standing if this job has required you and your colleagues to (1) apply changing guidance from the state … Read more
News Roundup
Yesterday Justice Stephen Breyer announced that he will retire from the United States Supreme Court when the court takes its summer recess later this year, assuming that his successor has been confirmed by that time. As a profile from SCOTUSblog explains, Breyer was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 after serving for 14 years on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. President Joe Biden made a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court and said yesterday that he intends to follow through on that commitment by the end of February. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
The AOC recently announced in a press release that Lydia Hoza has been appointed as the first chief public defender in Judicial District 27B, which includes Cleveland and Lincoln counties. The establishment of the new office was part of the state budget passed late last year. Hoza, who previously served as an assistant district attorney in Lincoln County, will be responsible for hiring thirteen attorneys and seven support staff who will work out of offices in both counties.
News Roundup
The shooting death of Andrew Walker by an off-duty Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy has drawn significant attention this week. Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin told ABC 11 that in his opinion Cumberland deputy Jeffrey Hash should be charged with a crime for shooting Walker, who Hash said jumped on his truck and ripped off a windshield wiper which Walker then used to beat the windshield as Hash and his family were in the vehicle. A judge recently authorized the release of body camera footage from officers who responded to the incident. Keep reading for more news.
New Criminal Charging Metric on the Measuring Justice Dashboard
As blog readers know, the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab has been developing a Measuring Justice Dashboard. Last year we released our Dashboard first metrics: Citation v. Arrest and Summons v. Warrant. We recently released a new Dashboard metric: Criminal Charging. In this post I’ll give some highlights of that tool. But in case you want to get right to it, you can access the Dashboard from the Lab’s web page (https://cjil.sog.unc.edu/); from the main page, click on “Measuring Justice.”