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When does questioning of a middle school student by the principal and in the presence of the school resource officer (SRO) constitute a custodial interrogation? The Court of Appeals of North Carolina issued a decision last week, In re D.A.H. ___ N.C. App. ___, 2021-NCCOA-135 (April 20, 2021), that details the legal analysis necessary to answer this question. The decision reviews the unique characteristics and law related to schoolhouse questioning and identifies seven factors most relevant to determining whether a juvenile is in custody and three factors most relevant to determining whether questioning is an interrogation. The application of this analysis to the facts of the case offers an important takeaway—the legal analysis must focus on an objective reasonable child standard and not on a particular child’s subjective familiarity with an SRO who is regularly present in the school environment.

In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), the Supreme Court held that a person who commits a homicide when he or she is under 18 may not be mandatorily sentenced to life without parole; the sentencing judge must have discretion to impose a lesser punishment. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016), the Court held that Miller applies retroactively. When Montgomery was decided, I wondered (here) whether it did more than merely address Miller’s retroactive application. Language in the case indicated that a sentence of life without parole would be constitutionally permissible for only the most the most troubling young defendants—“those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.” Id. at 209. In Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), decided last week, the Court made clear that the Constitution does not require a sentencer to make a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility before sentencing a defendant to life without parole.

This post summarizes published criminal and related decisions from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued in March of 2021 that may be of interest to state practitioners. Fourth Circuit summaries are also available on the UNC School of Government website, here.

The major national criminal law news of the week was the murder conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while arresting him for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store.  The jury’s verdict followed a trial that lasted nearly two weeks and included testimony from witnesses ranging from bystanders who filmed the incident and pleaded for Floyd’s life to the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department.  Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, spoke with the PBS NewsHour about what the verdict meant for his family and the wider movement to eliminate racial disparities in policing.  Keep reading for more news.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions released by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on April 20, 2021.

In my previous post, I wrote about the importance of and legal support for inquiring into prospective jurors’ perspectives on race and racial bias, which may include the Black Lives Matter movement. Let’s imagine that a potential juror expresses a favorable opinion of Black Lives Matter and also states that she can remain impartial and follow the judge’s instructions. If there is an attempt to remove that juror from the pool for cause based on her Black Lives Matter support, should it be sustained? Would it violate Batson to strike a juror on this basis? This post considers those questions.

Yesterday, as you all surely know, a Minneapolis jury returned three guilty verdicts in the criminal trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this trial. Many years from now, we may remember where we were when we received news of the verdict. It is a complex, emotional moment for a country traumatized and, to a certain extent, transformed by the horrifying video of George Floyd’s death last May. Tensions have been high in Minneapolis. Thousands of National Guard troops and law enforcement officers patrolled the city, and in-person school was preemptively cancelled this week in anticipation of the response to the trial’s outcome.

This post summarizes criminal decisions released by the Supreme Court of North Carolina on April 16, 2021.

A 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department in Minnesota, Kim Potter, was charged this week with second-degree manslaughter for killing 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop where Potter possibly confused her pistol for her taser.  The incident, which involved a white officer and a Black victim and occurred in relatively close proximity to the location where Derek Chauvin’s trial is being held, sparked several nights of protests.  Following a traffic stop for an expired registration, Potter was attempting to take Wright into custody on an outstanding arrest warrant for failure to appear when Wright attempted to get back into his car and flee the stop.  Body camera footage appears to show Potter yelling “Taser” before firing a single fatal shot with her Glock service pistol.  Keep reading for more news.

Last week, President Biden announced several new executive actions on firearms, including: calling for an updated report on firearms trafficking; nominating a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and ordering the Department of Justice to draft new regulations that will treat handguns equipped with pistol braces as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act, along with publishing a model “red flag” law for states to use as a guide. Jeff Welty and Shea Denning have previously written about red flag laws here and here.

One order in particular seems to be getting a lot of attention: instructing the DOJ to issue a proposed rule within 30 days to address “ghost guns.” I’ve gotten a few questions recently from law enforcement officers and prosecutors about ghost guns and the applicable law, so this post provides a summary of three topics: (i) what are ghost guns; (ii) why are they coming up as an issue now; and (iii) what do our existing state and federal laws say about them?