It is a new year, and there are new rules for determining the term of office for a district court judge appointed to fill a vacancy.
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News Roundup
Yesterday was the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol where American citizens violently assaulted law enforcement officers and injured government property while storming the building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The NewsHour has been running a series of special reports about the attack this week which are available here. The Greensboro News & Record reports that more than 725 people from across the country have been arrested for participating in the attack and has details about ongoing prosecutions of some North Carolinians. Keep reading for more news.
Case Summaries: N.C. Supreme Court (Dec. 17, 2021); N.C. Court of Appeals (Jan. 4, 2022)
This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Supreme Court released on December 17, 2021, and decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on January 4, 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.
State v. Dew: Multiple Assault Offenses and Distinct Interruptions
Happy New Year, everyone.
Around this time last year, I blogged about the decades-long question surrounding assault in our state: when do multiple physical acts constitute one continuing assault offense and when do they constitute more than one assault offense?
At the time the blog was written, the Court of Appeals had analyzed this issue several times, but the question had never reached our state Supreme Court. The Court has since decided State v. Dew, ___ N.C. ___, 2021-NCSC-124 (Oct. 29, 2021), building on the Court of Appeals’ jurisprudence and offering clarification on the “distinct interruption” approach used in deciding these cases. This post reviews the Court’s decision in Dew and the implications it has on physical assault cases moving forward.
Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Dec. 21, 2021)
This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on December 21, 2021. 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.
This is the final post of the year. Thanks to all of our readers for engaging with the blog this year, we hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.
News Roundup
WLOS reports that North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Kevin E. Glenn was shot on Tuesday while deploying stop sticks in an effort to end a motor vehicle chase. Fortunately, Glenn’s injuries, while serious, were not life threatening and he was released from the hospital yesterday. A Facebook post from the Yancey County Sheriff’s Office says that the suspect, who was not named, shot at officers multiple times, causing them to return fire. The suspect later was pronounced dead at Blue Ridge Regional Hospital. Keep reading for more news.
Prosecutors Talking to the Media
By now, most readers of this blog have probably seen the news stories about a school shooting that occurred in Michigan a couple weeks ago, and are aware of the prosecutor’s decision to charge the alleged shooter’s parents with involuntary manslaughter. If not, we covered it for you in the News Roundup (twice). Those articles contain extensive details about the facts of the case, the reasoning behind the charges against the parents, and the evidence that the state believes will support the charges. We now know about a meeting earlier the same day between the parents and school administrators, disturbing artwork found in a school desk, online searches for ammunition, texts and social media posts about the firearm, and much more.
The novelty of pursuing criminal charges against the parents of the alleged shooter has drawn most of the national attention, but it prompted me to think about another interesting issue that comes up fairly often in high-profile criminal cases: how much should the prosecutor be telling us about this pending case?
2021 Criminal Legislative Summaries Now Available
In this earlier blog post, I provided a then-current overview of criminal law and related legislation enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly this legislative session. Since then, there have been a few more bills enacted that affect criminal law, criminal procedure, and motor vehicle law, as well as some amendments to previously enacted bills.
2021 Changes to North Carolina’s Expunction Laws
As in recent sessions, the General Assembly remained active in revising North Carolina’s expunction laws. The biggest changes came in S.L. 2021-118 (S 301), as amended by section 2.3 of S.L. 2021-167 (H 761). The legislation expanded the opportunity for a person to expunge older convictions of “nonviolent” felonies but with complex eligibility conditions. This post is a first stab at analyzing that legislation. At the end of the post are short summaries of other 2021 legislation revising North Carolina’s expunction laws.