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As the Asheville Citizen-Times reports, earlier this month the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was the victim of a damaging cyberattack that caused widespread damage to tribal networks and affected critical systems including 911 dispatch.  Almost two weeks out from the December 7 attack, the tribe still is working to repair their network and bring systems back online.  A former IT employee who was suspended two days before the attack, Benjamin Cody Long, has been arrested in connection with the incident.  A report from the Cherokee One Feather covering Long’s detention hearing in Cherokee Tribal Court has detailed information about the attack and includes a quote from the judge describing the damage as “immense and unprecedented.”

This is the last blog post of the year.  Thanks to all of our readers for engaging with the blog this year, we hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.  Keep reading for more news.

Under a law that existed from late 1994 to late 1998, North Carolina defendants sentenced to life without parole for offenses committed during that window are entitled to a judicial review after 25 years of imprisonment. I wrote about it here a few years ago, noting that the window for reviews would open in late 2019. Here we are.

This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on December 17, 2019.

These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free, searchable database of case annotations from 2008 to today.

Questions frequently arise about the requirements to charge the various types of general crimes like attempt, conspiracy, and accessory. A related question is whether the theory of liability, such as acting in concert or aiding and abetting, must be specifically pled. For defenders new to felony work, it can come as an unwelcome surprise to discover the jury is being instructed on an unexpected theory not identified in the pleading. This post lays out the basics for pleading general crimes and theories of liability of participants in the crime and links to the jury instructions for each.

One of the projects that I wanted to finish before I go was updating my old paper on the 48-hour rule of G.S. 15A-534.1. I just completed the update. The […]

As the New York Times reports, a prolonged shootout at a Kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Tuesday terrified the city and left six people dead, including a police officer.  Now being investigated as an anti-Semitic hate crime, it appears that the supermarket was purposefully chosen as a target. Suspects David N. Anderson and Francine Graham, who both died during the attack, are thought to have shot Detective Joe Seals, a 15-year law enforcement veteran, in an encounter at a cemetery and then to have driven to the market where they began shooting at people with rifles.  When police arrived at the scene, they were immediately fired upon and a lengthy gun battle ensued, eventually concluding when an armored vehicle was used to ram through the front of the market. Keep reading for more news.

This post summarizes published decisions from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that may be of interest to state criminal practitioners from November, 2019.

This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Supreme Court on December 6, 2019.

If you type “miranda” into the search box on this blog, it will return more than 50 posts covering a wide range of related topics: the meaning of custody, deficient warnings, knowing and voluntary waivers, ambiguous assertion of rights, special rules for juveniles, readvising and reinterviewing, public safety exceptions, and many, many others.

But I was stumped recently by a deceptively simple question that I had not heard before, and did not come up in those results: what if the defendant’s lawyer is present? Does an in-custody defendant still have to be advised of his Miranda rights before he can be questioned by police?

I did some digging, and the case law on this issue genuinely surprised me.

After 12 years at the School of Government, I have accepted a position at the North Carolina Department of Justice. I’ll be leading the Special Prosecutions and Law Enforcement Section within the Criminal Division. I am looking forward to a new challenge and to the opportunity to work with wonderful new colleagues. At the same time, I am profoundly grateful for my time at the School of Government. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some parts of my work here that I have especially cherished.