North Carolina doesn’t have a land border with Mexico or Canada, so most people don’t think of us as a border state. But we are. We have a maritime border and several international airports that courts have deemed the functional equivalent of a border. Fourth Amendment protections are greatly reduced at the border, and United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency responsible for securing the border, reports that in 2023 it conducted border searches of electronic devices belonging to 41,467 travelers. This post considers when law enforcement officers may search an international traveler’s electronic devices.
News Roundup
In the aftermath of the widespread destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene, federal and state officials have begun providing relief assistance to affected residents in western North Carolina. These efforts have been complicated by widespread misinformation regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and others. This past weekend, someone called 911 to report that an armed man near a FEMA relief center was allegedly threatening to harm relief workers and who supposedly spoke of “truckloads of militia members” in the area. According to this report, FEMA took the threat seriously, suspending door to door visits with residents and temporarily scaling back relief efforts in response. The man in question was found with an assault rifle and a pistol and was charged with going armed to the terror of the public. The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department ultimately determined that the man was acting alone and that the report of armed militias in the area was untrue. The Governor’s office, FEMA, and other agencies have denounced this incident and other instances of misleading and inaccurate information about disaster relief efforts. My colleague, Kristi Nickodem, recently published a blog post over at Coates’ Canons addressing what local governments can do to combat misinformation in this context, which you can read here. Read on for more criminal law news.
Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Oct. 15, 2024)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on October 15, 2024. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.
Extension of the Chief Justice’s Emergency Order for Certain Counties
In response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court entered an emergency order applicable to certain impacted counties on September 29, 2024, as amended September 30 (the “Original Order”). The Original Order extended “the time and periods of limitation for filing and of acts due to be done” in the following 28 counties: Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Cherokee, Clay, Cleveland, Gaston, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Lincoln, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey.
New Resources for Protecting Vulnerable Adults in North Carolina
In state fiscal year 2022-2023, county departments of social services in North Carolina received 35,400 reports alleging the abuse, neglect, or exploitation of vulnerable adults. Fifty-six counties across the state have addressed this problem through creating adult protection multidisciplinary teams (MDTs)—groups of professionals from different disciplines who work together to prevent and respond to abuse, … Read more
News Roundup
Our hearts remain with the communities in Western North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene. On Wednesday, lawmakers unanimously passed “The Disaster Recovery Act of 2024” allocating $273 million to meet immediate needs and begin the recovery process. The bill also contains provisions for a recovery fund for Brunswick County and the Carolina Beach area after major flooding during a storm in September, and a similar fund for Rocky Mount to assist with recovery after a tornado caused by Helene damaged buildings and caused injuries. Notable provisions of the bill expand eligibility for serving as a volunteer poll worker and for submitting absentee ballots, and authorize the Governor to waive certain DMV fees, such as duplicate license/identification card fees and late fees for motor vehicle registration renewals. Additionally, the bill temporarily extends the deadline for preliminary hearings for post-release supervision and parole violations once a supervisee has been arrested from seven to twenty-one working days. Governor Roy Cooper signed the bill into law Thursday morning. Read on for more criminal law news.
2024 Updates to the Superior Court Judges’ Benchbook
About a year ago, I wrote to let readers know that several chapters in the criminal law section of the Superior Court Judges’ Benchbook, a resource created and formerly edited by my colleague Jessica Smith, had been updated. I am writing now to let you know that several more have been added to that list. … Read more
Indictment Technicalities: Gone Today and Here Tomorrow
Singleton was supposed to make things simpler. As previously reported, in that case our Supreme Court attempted to eliminate some “obsolete technicalities” of the common law by abrogating the jurisdictional indictment rule, whereby a defective pleading deprives the trial court of jurisdiction. My colleague Danny Spiegel called it a sea change. The Court of Appeals decided two cases in September that illustrate continuing complexity in this area. In State v. Pierce, COA23-348 (N.C. Ct. App. Sept. 3, 2024), the court held the trial court did not lack jurisdiction to accept a pro se defendant’s waiver of indictment, despite a statutory prohibition on such uncounseled waiver. And in State v. Wilkins, COA23-839 (N.C. Ct. App. Sept. 17, 2024), the court found the trial court lacked jurisdiction due to a fatally defective indictment. This post considers those two cases.
The Fourth Circuit Weighs in on THC-O and “Synthetic” THC
In September, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a significant decision affecting the hemp industry on the federal level. There has been an open question for some time regarding the legality of certain cannabinoids that do not naturally occur in the cannabis plant but can be created from hemp products. THC-O (tetrahydrocannabinol acetate) is an example of such a compound. State and federal criminal law both ban “synthetic THC.” What exactly counts as “synthetic” THC? I wrote a bit about this ambiguity in the law before, but Anderson v. Diamondback Investment Group, LLC, ___ F.4th ___; 2024 WL 4031401 (4th Cir. 2024), provides some of the first guidance on the issue in the age of legal hemp. Read on for the details.