Latest posts in category Uncategorized on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The Supreme Court decided Bucklew v. Precythe today, rejecting a death row inmate’s challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol. Challenges to lethal injection are now 0-for-3 in the Supreme Court, but the Court did not foreclose future litigation. To the contrary, it left the door open to further challenges, and so did nothing to break up the litigation logjam that has resulted in a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina.

Late last week Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.  Attorney General William Barr wrote a summary of the report to members of Congress on Sunday, saying that the report has two parts, one focusing on whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government and the other focusing on whether President Trump obstructed justice.  Barr quotes the report as stating that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”  Barr’s summary says that the Special Counsel did not “make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the question of obstruction, and quotes the report as stating that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”  Along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Barr said that he had concluded that the evidence in the report is “not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”  Keep reading for more news.

This March, you almost need a bracket to keep up with recent personnel changes in the state’s judicial branch. Not only were a handful of new appellate judges elected to office in 2018, but, just in the last month, the governor appointed a new chief justice and announced plans to appoint a sitting court of appeals judge to fill the associate justice seat she vacated. In the same time frame, the General Assembly passed legislation to prevent the departure of a sitting court of appeals judge from reducing the size of that court. Having trouble keeping up? This post will review recent events impacting the composition of the state’s appellate courts and judicial branch leadership and preview potential changes to come.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA) is the central federal law that establishes core requirements for state juvenile justice systems. 34 USC §111. In return for compliance with these core requirements, the statute authorizes federal funding for states to use in their juvenile justice systems. The JJDPA expired in 2007 and was recently reauthorized in the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018. Public Law No 115-385. The reauthorized statute made several significant amendments to the JJDPA. In this blog post I will discuss three of the highlights: a new focus on evidence-based and promising programs and practices, changes in the disproportionate minority contact core requirement, and new requirements regarding identification and treatment of mental health and substance use disorders.

A stunning and tragic mass shooting in New Zealand late last week is one of the biggest international criminal law news stories in recent memory.  Last Friday, an Australian man motivated by racism killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch.  In a disturbing use of modern technology, the attack was streamed live to Facebook from a camera the gunman wore on a helmet.  News reports say that the man was active on right-wing white nationalist internet forums, and that he posted a lengthy manifesto to one such forum just before the attack.  In that document, he reportedly said that in addition to stoking racial discord, one of his goals was to further divide Americans on the controversial issue of gun laws.  Keep reading for more news.

On Tuesday the Justice Department charged 50 people, including celebrities and business leaders, with participating in nationwide bribery and fraud schemes that allowed their children to be admitted into top universities despite lacking the necessary qualifications.  As the New York Times reports, parents, college preparatory businesses, university officials, and coaches paid and accepted bribes in order to secure spots at various competitive universities.  The schemes were fractured and complex – sometimes a test proctor was bribed to adjust a student’s standardized test score, other times a coach was bribed to falsely label a student as an athletic recruit.  The common denominator in the sprawling schemes was the exchange of significant amounts of money.  The Times story describes situations where parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in at least one case more than $1 million, in order to fraudulently secure a spot for their child at a desirable school.  Keep reading for more news.

As WRAL reports, the General Assembly passed and Governor Roy Cooper signed legislation that repeals the 2017 law designed to reduce the number of seats on the Court of Appeals from 15 to 12 over time.  When it was passed, the plan to reduce the number of seats on the court caused Judge Doug McCullough to unexpectedly retire from the bench so that his seat would not be eliminated.  The enactment of the new law keeping the number of seats on the court at 15 is intended to end litigation over the controversial measure.

Advocates of criminal justice reform have called for numerous policy changes in recent years, including raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction, eliminating or reducing reliance on money bail, decreasing monetary penalties for poor defendants, ending license revocations as a sanction for failing to appear for court or pay monies owed, and abandoning mandatory minimum sentencing. Many have also advocated for a re-examination of the role of the prosecutor, suggesting that prosecutors could better channel their power and discretion to lessen racial disparities, reduce recidivism, rehabilitate offenders, and cut rates of incarceration. Two reports published last December focus on this re-envisioned prosecutorial function. The first, 21 Principles for the 21^st Century Prosecutor, suggests practical steps that prosecutors can take to reduce incarceration and increase fairness. The second, Prosecutorial Attitudes, Perspectives, and Priorities: Insights from the Inside, explores what prosecutors in four prosecutorial districts think about definitions of success, office priorities, community engagement, and racial disparities.

Under North Carolina law a criminal defendant has the right to inform the jury of the punishment for the crime being tried. In State v. McMorris, 290 N.C. 286 (1976), the North Carolina Supreme Court traced this right back to the mid-19th century. Back then, the legislature took umbrage at a judge’s refusal to allow a lawyer to argue both the law and facts to the jury and enacted what is now G.S. 7A-97. That statute states that “the whole case as well of law as of fact may be argued to the jury.” The Supreme Court in McMorris held that this provision gave the defendant the right to inform the jury of the statutory punishment in the case. The Court observed: “In a real sense the sanction prescribed for criminal behavior is part of the law of the case.” 290 N.C. at 287.

The National Center for State Courts just released new rankings of judicial salaries. How does North Carolina fare?