Recent blog posts - 111 of 401

During the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal court systems moved to virtual proceedings to maintain essential court operations while minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To understand more about that transition and the lessons it holds for the future, we surveyed North Carolina trial judges, prosecutors, defenders, and clerks of court about virtual court. Our survey included questions about changes to court proceedings during the pandemic, the benefits of and concerns about virtual court, best practice suggestions for virtual proceedings, support for various virtual proceedings, experiences with using various technology platforms, and other aspects of virtual proceedings. We received responses from 182 people (Figure 1) from all 100 North Carolina counties.

Figure 1. Survey Respondents’ Current Role in the Criminal Justice System

Our full report is available here. In this post we summarize some top line results.

A series of shootings in the Atlanta area that left eight people dead is the major criminal law news story of the week and has launched the issue of increasing violence committed against Asians to the forefront of national conversation.  Keep reading for more on this story and other news.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on March 16, 2021. Gabrielle Supak and Christopher Tyner prepared these summaries. As always, they will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.

This post summarizes published criminal law and related decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in February, 2021, which may be of interest to state practitioners.  Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available on the SOG website here.

This post summarizes criminal decisions released by the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday, March 12, 2021.

Chief Justice Paul Newby issued an order on Friday, effective today, extending emergency directives currently in place for an additional thirty days to in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Tomorrow marks a full year of altered court operations, as the first set of COVID-19 emergency directives became effective Monday, March 16, 2020.

Trial began this week for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for several minutes while arresting him for allegedly using a counterfeit bill at a convenience store.  Chauvin is facing Minnesota state murder and manslaughter charges.  The trial is drawing significant media attention, with some outlets publishing live updates and planning to livestream the proceedings after jury selection is completed.  USA Today reported Thursday that six jurors have been seated and that the state has raised two Batson challenges to defense strikes of Hispanic potential jurors, neither of which have been sustained.  Keep reading for more news.

Several prior posts on this blog have addressed authenticating and admitting digital evidence like social media posts and text messages (see here, here, here, and here) and we’ve also previously covered the basic rules and requirements for using the business records hearsay exception (see here, here and here), but we’ve not yet explored the questions and issues that arise when those two topics collide.

For example, if the state obtains a complete copy of a suspect’s account records from Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T, including user-generated content such as messages, chats, texts, and posts, can that evidence be admitted as a business record? I recently had an opportunity to talk about digital evidence with prosecutors in several other states, and there are opposing views in different jurisdictions about the correct answer to this question. This post looks at the conflicting interpretations, the North Carolina guidance we have so far, and an interesting alternative approach.

I am happy to announce the completion of the 2020 Edition of my online guide to expunctions and other relief from a criminal conviction in North Carolina. It took me a while to dissect and incorporate all the changes into the previous, 2018 online edition. (It would have taken far longer to update the guide without the patient and painstaking work of Owen Dubose of the School’s publications division.) If I missed anything or got anything wrong, please let me know. Here is what you’ll find in the new edition.

Video of a Salisbury Police Department K9 handler hoisting a police dog, Zuul, by his leash and slamming him into the side of a vehicle during a training exercise made local and national headlines this week and is under review by the department.  Salisbury Police Chief Jerry Stokes said at a press conference, which Zuul attended, that an outside agency is reviewing the incident to determine whether the handler’s actions were proper methods of training.  Keep reading for more news.