North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Yet again this week, our nation confronts the tragedy of a mass shooting.  Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of murder following an attack on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  Cruz was a student at the school but had been expelled.  For perspective on where this incident falls among the more than 40 active shooter episodes at schools in the United States since 2000, 12 people were killed at Columbine and 26 were killed at Sandy Hook; two were killed last month in Kentucky.  Three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern United States history have occurred in the last five months.  Keep reading for more news.

As the Associated press reports, last week United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a new policy regarding immigration arrests at courthouses.  The policy appears to suggest that ICE primarily will enter courthouses to arrest specific “targeted aliens” who have criminal convictions, are gang members, pose a threat to public safety, have been ordered removed from the United States, or have illegally re-entered the country after being removed.  The policy says that aliens encountered in the process of making an arrest of a targeted person, such as the target’s family members or friends, will not be arrested “absent special circumstances.”  Keep reading for more news.

In 1985, Anthony Wyrick sexually assaulted two teenage girls in Charlotte. The police collected semen and other biological evidence but DNA testing was not available at that time and the crime went unsolved. Almost 30 years later, the case came to the attention of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s sexual assault cold case unit. Officers submitted the biological evidence for DNA testing. The results pointed to Wyrick, who lived near the scene of the crime in 1985 and who had since been convicted of an unrelated second-degree rape. Wyrick was eventually arrested, charged, and convicted. His conviction was affirmed last month in State v. Wyrick, which I how I learned of the case. Reading it got me wondering about the status of what is popularly known as the rape kit backlog.

Larry Nassar was back in Michigan court this week for another sentencing hearing arising from a November guilty plea to three counts of criminal sexual conduct.  The New York Times says that 65 women are scheduled to speak at this hearing.  USA Today reports that the Nassar case has caused Texas Governor Greg Abbott to direct the Texas Rangers to investigate the Karolyi Ranch, a former National Training Center for USA Gymnastics run by Bela and Marta Karolyi.  Several victims have alleged that Nassar abused them at the ranch.  Keep reading for more news.

On Tuesday, a 15-year-old high schooler with a handgun killed two fellow students and wounded sixteen others in Kentucky.  According to NBC News, the shooter opened fire in a common area of Marshall County High School just before 8:00 a.m., sending the school into chaos as students desperately fled the attack.  Police officers arrived at the school minutes later, quickly disarming the shooter and taking him into custody.  Bailey Nicole Holt died at the scene and Preston Ryan Cope died later at a hospital.  Keep reading for more news.

A disturbing case of child abuse has received widespread national news coverage this week.  As the L.A. Times reports, David and Louise Turpin of Perris, California, were charged with multiple felony counts of torture and child abuse after it was discovered that the couple had held their thirteen children captive for years and subjected them to unimaginable mistreatment.  On Sunday, one of the children escaped the family home through a window and called 911, alerting authorities that she and her siblings had been beaten, starved, shackled, and forced to live in unsanitary conditions.  Bail has been set at $12 million for each defendant.  Keep reading for more news.

The Durham Herald Sun reported this week that felony charges against eight people allegedly involved in destroying a Confederate monument in downtown Durham last summer have been dismissed.  The criminal cases are not over though, the Herald Sun report says that those charged in the incident will be tried on misdemeanors including injury to personal property, injury to real property, and defacing or injuring a public monument.  Apparently, a great deal of public interest in these cases remains, the report says that the courtroom was overloaded with spectators such that some defendants who were in court for unrelated cases couldn’t find a seat.  Keep reading for more news.

The first week of the new year has been unusually cold and a mid-week winter storm created dangerous travel conditions across much of North Carolina.  The Highway Patrol already had responded to hundreds of weather-related collisions at the time of writing, and frigid conditions are expected to cause hazardous conditions into the weekend.  Thanks to law enforcement, emergency response, and other government agencies for their efforts during and after the storm.  Stay safe and keep reading for more news.

On Monday morning, a man detonated a pipe bomb inside a subway corridor in New York, seriously injuring himself but, because the device malfunctioned, not causing serious harm to anyone else.  Apparently intending to carry out a devastating suicide attack, Akayed Ullah posted a message on his Facebook page saying “Trump you failed to protect your nation,” and set off for the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan with a homemade pipe bomb strapped to his torso.  The device did not fully detonate, likely sparing many lives.  Ullah has told investigators that he carried out the attack for the Islamic State, and he has been charged with several terrorism offenses.

Keep reading for the final blog post of the year – the North Carolina Criminal Law blog is signing off for the holidays and wishing our readers a safe and happy season.  We’ll have new posts beginning January 2.

If a law enforcement officer obtains a search warrant for a suspect’s cell phone, may the officer use the phone to access cloud storage to which it is linked? For example, may the officer click on the Dropbox icon on the phone’s home screen and see what’s there?