Latest posts in category Uncategorized on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

As WRAL reports, former Wake County Register of Deeds Laura Riddick pleaded guilty late last week to felony embezzlement charges arising from her years-long practice of diverting funds from the office for her personal use.  Under the terms of Riddick’s plea agreement, she repaid $926,615 that she had taken from the office and will serve a five to seven year prison sentence.  The WRAL report says that three other former employees of the deeds office have been charged in connection with the case.  Keep reading for more news.

As the Daily Tar Heel reports, this week a group of protesters on UNC campus used ropes to pull down the controversial Confederate monument known as Silent Sam; the protesters then covered the statue in dirt before it was removed by heavy equipment from McCorkle Place.  Chancellor Carol Folt explained in a statement that the monument “has been divisive for years” but criticized the “unlawful and dangerous” act of vandalism.  Time magazine published a story about the history of the statue that recounts decades of protests involving Silent Sam and includes excerpts of the speech delivered at the dedication of the statue in 1913 by Julian Carr.  Carr’s full remarks, including a personal anecdote where he boasted of violently assaulting a black woman within 100 yards of the site of the monument, are available here.  Keep reading for more news.

In 2010, I wrote a post asking, “Can a defendant be ordered to pay restitution based on offenses that did not result in a conviction?” The court of appeals answered that question this week in State v. Murphy.

This week a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report of an investigation into six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses which says that there is credible evidence that more than 300 “predator priests” sexually abused more than 1000 children over decades.  The report further alleges that the church orchestrated a sophisticated cover-up of the sex crimes.  The New York Times has an overview of the report here, and the full report, thorough and unflinching, is available here.  The statute of limitations has expired for the majority of the crimes detailed in the report.  Keep reading for more news.

As USA Today reports, Sunday is the one-year anniversary of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that began with torch-bearing marchers parading through the campus of the University of Virginia chanting racist slogans and ended with a participant killing a counter-demonstrator.  In the aftermath, Charlottesville law enforcement agencies were criticized for their limited efforts at ensuring public safety.  An anniversary rally reportedly is scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville has preemptively declared a state of emergency.  Keep reading for more news.

If you’ve driven around much in North Carolina, you’ve likely noted the proliferation of special license plates. Legislation authorizing the issuance of such plates is correspondingly ubiquitous. So it wasn’t particularly noteworthy when, earlier this year, the General Assembly added two new special registration plates to the list that now numbers in the hundreds, one for the Order of the Eastern Star Prince Hall Affiliated and another for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

What is noteworthy about 2018 license plate legislation is the General Assembly’s authorization of a new standard-issue license plate for private passenger vehicle: a National/State Mottos plate.

Last month, the court of appeals ruled that the pattern jury instruction for felony indecent exposure was inadequate given the facts of the case before it. The case is State v. Hoyle.

Trial began this week in Virginia for Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign who has been charged with a variety of crimes unrelated to the campaign.  Manafort’s current trial involves charges of bank fraud, money laundering, lobbying disclosure violations, and obstruction of justice, with the alleged offenses largely stemming from lucrative political consulting work Manafort performed in Ukraine.  Prosecutors say that Manafort hid his overseas income to avoid taxes, and then committed bank fraud to obtain loans when the income stream dried up.  Manafort is scheduled to face trial on other charges in September.  Keep reading for more news.

This November, North Carolina voters will be asked to vote for or against a “Constitutional amendment to implement a nonpartisan merit-based system that relies on professional qualifications instead of political influence when nominating Justices and judges to be selected to fill vacancies that occur between judicial elections.” If voters approve the amendment, what will change about the way judges are selected in North Carolina?

In Carpenter v. United States, __ U.S. __, __ S.Ct. __, 2018 WL 3073916 (June 22, 2018), the Supreme Court ruled that when the government obtains long-term, historical cell site location information (CSLI) about a person, it conducts a Fourth Amendment search  and so “the Government must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before acquiring such records.” I previously blogged about Carpenter here.

That post referenced the possibility of using a court order supported by probable cause in lieu of a search warrant. The idea behind that suggestion was that some of the statutory execution procedures associated with search warrants are an awkward fit for this type of order. For example, G.S. 15A-252 requires that an officer executing a warrant must “read the warrant and give a copy of the warrant application . . . to the person to be searched, or the person in apparent control of the premises . . . to be searched.” In a case involving CSLI, is the officer supposed to read the warrant to Verizon? Or to the suspect, even though he or she will not be present at the search? But since I wrote my prior post, I’ve been asked several times whether using a court order based on probable cause in place of a search warrant would really be permissible. This post attempts to answer that question.