North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

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.

On Monday, state and federal law enforcement agencies raided three “full-fledged” casinos operating in Robeson County, according to the Fayetteville Observer.  The Observer says that the casinos were located in warehouses in various locations within the county, and that they were being run by members of the Tuscarora Indian Nation Sovereignty Territory.  As the News & Observer explains in another piece about the raids, the “Tuscarora are a federally recognized tribe in New York with ancestral roots in North and South Carolina,” though none of the groups identifying as Tuscarora in North Carolina have received federal recognition.  Keep reading for more news.

Suppose that law enforcement becomes aware of criminal activity taking place through a website, like the distribution of child pornography or the sale of illegal drugs. Can officers use computer hacking techniques and malware to identify users who accessed the website? Would the officers need a search warrant to do that? What kind of a search warrant? This post tackles those questions.

Late last week, Justice Department special counsel Robert S. Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election.  This week, as a result of an FBI investigation separate from the special counsel, the Justice Department indicted Russian national Maria Butina for illegally acting as an agent of the Russian government in an effort to influence American politics.  Butina allegedly posed as a graduate student at American University while working covertly to develop contacts within political groups in an effort to advance policies favorable to Russia.  Keep reading for more news.

It’s hard to believe, but this blog is almost ten years old. Google Analytics reports that thousands of people use the blog every day, and as far as we can […]