North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

I continue to receive questions about transferring from juvenile to criminal superior court cases involving allegations that 16-and 17-year-olds have engaged in certain criminal conduct. Recently I’ve been asked about the transfer process for offenses committed at ages 16 and 17 in cases that involve a series of charges that include Class A – G felonies, Class H and I felonies, and misdemeanors. Because the Juvenile Code prescribes differing procedures for transferring various classes of felonies and there is no transfer process for misdemeanor offenses, confusion is understandable. The key to understanding how to handle these cases is this: Once one felony is transferred, all other related charges, regardless of offense class, are automatically brought under the jurisdiction of the superior court. Why?

Criminal justice issues continued to capture the national news spotlight this week.  On Tuesday, President Donald Trump granted clemency to eleven people, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr.  On Thursday, amidst ongoing drama involving President Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice, Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for convictions related to obstructing a congressional investigation.  Keep reading for more on these stories and other news.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays the School of Government from swift completion of their case summaries. This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on February 18, 2020. Everyone stay safe during this wintry weather.

As the New York Times reports, the major criminal law news of the week was the sudden withdrawal of four federal prosecutors from Roger Stone’s criminal case after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a sentence that was more lenient than what had been recommended by the prosecution team.  Stone was convicted by a Washington, D.C., jury of seven criminal offenses late last year, including five counts of lying to congress, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction.  Keep reading for more news.

The School of Government and the Conference of District Attorneys co-sponsored Practical Skills for New Prosecutors last week. The five-day course includes 12 hours of Professionalism for New Attorneys requirements, so we spent a lot of time talking about professionalism and ethics. While every attorney should, of course, be familiar with the Rules of Professional Conduct, there are five ethics rules that should be at the top of every prosecutor’s list.

The Durham Herald-Sun reports that the Durham District Attorney’s Office dismissed a murder charge against Alexander Bishop, a Durham teenager who was accused of killing his father in 2018.  The dismissal, based on insufficient evidence, follows a trial court ruling last year that search warrants in the case were invalid because an investigator misrepresented evidence when applying for them.  Keep reading for more news.

This post summarizes opinions issued by the Court of Appeals of North Carolina on February 4, 2020.

Two recent cases from the Court of Appeals highlight a recurring issue related to money in criminal cases: the requirement to give a defendant notice and an opportunity to be heard before entry of a judgment for attorney fees.

This post summarizes criminal and related decisions published by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in January, 2020. Decisions of interest to state practitioners will be posted on a monthly basis. Previous Fourth Circuit case summaries are available here.

WRAL reports that Durham police announced yesterday that they recently made an arrest in a sexual assault case that occurred more than four years ago.  In November 2015, a woman was attacked and sexually assaulted while walking home from work on the Ellerbe Creek Trail.  The WRAL report says that investigators were unable to develop strong leads in the case until last fall, when they submitted DNA from the rape kit for testing.  That test connected the DNA to Emanuel Dwayne Burch, whose DNA profile was in a national database.  The State Crime Lab then connected the DNA in the kit to a new sample taken from Burch.  Keep reading for more news.