Latest posts in category Uncategorized on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

As many blog readers know, I’ve been offering my free Criminal Case Compendium since 2008. The Compendium is a collection of U.S. Supreme Court, Fourth Circuit & published N.C. criminal law, procedure and evidence case summaries, arranged by subject. Until now, folks have accessed the Compendium online as a massive 900-page PDF, containing over 3,000 case summaries. That worked okay, but we knew we could do better. And we have. My Criminal Case Compendium has just been re-released in a new format: A dynamic web-based version, designed to help you find the law you need even faster. The robust search feature puts real power behind your keyword search, sorting cases by relevancy. And if you like navigating through a table of contents, that’s still there, only amped up a few notches on the “usability scale.”

This Thursday at lunchtime (12:30 to 1:30) we will host our monthly “office hours” conference call. Shea Denning, Phil Dixon, and I will discuss recent developments in criminal law and will do our best to answer listeners’ questions. The event seems to be building an audience, and this month, we’d like to invite folks to submit questions or topic suggestions in advance, by posting a comment to this blog post or by email as described below. We will continue taking live questions on the call as well.

I suspect we’ll find time to talk about electronic surveillance. There’s a new out-of-state opinion about Stingrays and the Fourth Amendment, and the Supreme Court is getting ready to hear a major case about cell phone tracking. We’ll bring some other topics to the table, too, but as usual, we’ll let listeners drive the direction of the call. Read on for more details.

Sports fans across the country were shocked this week to learn that for several years the FBI and federal prosecutors have been investigating what one prosecutor has described as “the dark underbelly of college basketball.”  As part of an investigation that may reveal widespread corruption, federal criminal complaints against several people associated with various college basketball teams were made public on Tuesday.  The story is complex and still developing, but a New York Times article says that “two broad schemes” have been alleged.  One involves assistant coaches who allegedly were bribed to persuade players to use certain financial advisors after turning pro.  The other involves Adidas secretly giving money to certain players and their families in exchange for the players’ commitments to play at Adidas-sponsored schools.  Keep reading for more news.

A group of district court judges gathered at the School last week for a class focused on the establishment of school justice partnerships, a central component of the Raise the Age legislation. The class was productive, but there was an elephant in the room that kept distracting everyone. If you’ve been keeping up with the General Assembly’s work over the past month, you likely can call the elephant by name.

Over the weekend a Georgia Tech student was shot and killed by a campus police officer in a tragic incident that set off protests on the school’s campus this week.  21-year-old student Scout Schultz was shot by 23-year-old campus police officer Tyler Beck on Saturday night.  Reports suggest that Schultz, who had some history of mental illness, may have orchestrated the shooting, reportedly calling 911 to falsely report an armed suspicious person and then advancing on responding officers while carrying a multi-tool and disregarding their orders to stop.  A few days after the shooting, a campus vigil held in remembrance of Shultz was followed by what has been described as a violent protest where a police car was set on fire and two officers were injured.   Keep reading for more news.

Last week we hosted nearly 30 mostly new attorneys for the Misdemeanor Defender program. The training takes place here every fall, and focuses on preparing attorneys for handling cases at the district court level. If you’d like to know more about our indigent defense education programs, jump to the end of this post to find out about available training materials and future trainings.

A shooting at a high school near Spokane, Washington, on Wednesday morning left one student dead and three others injured.  Caleb Sharpe, a sophomore at Freeman High School, is accused of killing fellow student Sam Strahan and wounding three other students.  Reportedly armed with an AR-15 rifle and a handgun, Sharpe is said to have opened fire in a hallway just before classes were scheduled to begin.  A report from local paper The Spokesman-Review says that Sharpe began the attack with the rifle, which soon jammed.  He then began firing the handgun before being tackled and disarmed by a school custodian.  The story was developing at the time of writing.  Keep reading for more news.

A Raleigh murder made national news this week with reports indicating that the suspect told a 911 dispatcher that taking too much cough medicine may have contributed to the killing.  Late last week, Matthew James Phelps was charged with murdering his wife, Lauren Ashley-Nicole Phelps.  According to WRAL, Matthew called 911 to report that he had awoken from a dream to discover that Lauren was dead and that he was covered in blood.  He also told the dispatcher that he had taken too much cough medicine, which he was using to help him sleep.  The News & Observer has a story here that explores whether an ingredient in cough medicine can cause hallucinations, psychosis, or violent behavior.  Keep reading for more news.

With Hurricane Harvey fresh in our minds, Hurricane Irma is bearing down on Florida. The storm could work its way up the coast to the Carolinas by early next week, possibly following a path similar to last year’s Hurricane Matthew or Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Governor Cooper has declared a state of emergency for all 100 counties, ordering state and local government entities to be prepared and temporarily suspending certain motor vehicle restrictions.

A question that sometimes arises when the government sets up emergency shelters is whether registered sex offenders may use them. The sheriff of Polk County, Florida, tweeted yesterday that registrants would not be allowed in shelters there. What is the law in North Carolina?

Are legal issues keeping you up at night? Have we got a program for you!  Let’s talk it out tomorrow during Office Hours at the Judicial College.