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WRAL reports that Durham police announced yesterday that they recently made an arrest in a sexual assault case that occurred more than four years ago.  In November 2015, a woman was attacked and sexually assaulted while walking home from work on the Ellerbe Creek Trail.  The WRAL report says that investigators were unable to develop strong leads in the case until last fall, when they submitted DNA from the rape kit for testing.  That test connected the DNA to Emanuel Dwayne Burch, whose DNA profile was in a national database.  The State Crime Lab then connected the DNA in the kit to a new sample taken from Burch.  Keep reading for more news.

Judges, inmates, and others have asked me about the First Step Act, wondering whether it entitles certain defendants to a reduced sentence or an early release from prison. The confusing thing is that there are two First Step Acts—one federal, and one state. The federal First Step Act was signed into law in late 2018. North Carolina’s First Step Act did not become law.

Local jails are an important part of the state’s criminal justice system. Jails house, among others, individuals held pretrial, serving sentences, and held for federal and other authorities. In this report and in the accompanying spreadsheet (here), we provide information about North Carolina jail occupancy rates. Among other things, we find that:

• 50% of counties exceeded in-county jail capacity for at least one month in 2018; and
• 64% of counties exceeded 90% of in-county jail capacity for at least one month in 2018.

The capacity to transfer a juvenile matter to superior court as a result of the return of an indictment was added to the Juvenile Code as part of the law changes that raised the age of juvenile court jurisdiction. S.L. 2017-57 §16D.4.(e) as amended by S.L. 2019-186 §8.a. Never before had the indictment process been connected to delinquency matters in juvenile court. This new structure requires a finding in the juvenile matter after an indictment has been returned. It raises a range of questions about procedure and confidentiality. This post will review when indictment can be used to trigger the transfer process, highlight what is known and not known about the procedure that must accompany the new use of indictment in delinquency matters, and address the question of confidentiality of an indictment that is used to form the basis of a judicial finding in juvenile court.

When a person suspected of driving while impaired is involved in a crash and receives medical treatment, the State may wish to obtain the person’s medical records for use in criminal prosecution. What standards and procedures govern the disclosure of such records?

On Tuesday, officials in Winston-Salem held a press conference announcing coordinated efforts to deter gun violence in the city.  As the Winston-Salem Journal reports, there were more homicides in Winston in 2019 than in any other year in the past quarter century.  Chief of Police Catrina Thompson, Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough, District Attorney Jim O’Neal, U.S. Attorney Matt Martin, Mayor Allen Joines, and Councilman James Taylor all spoke at the press conference, with Thompson saying that they would “use every one of the resources [they] have” to pursue individuals involved in violent crime.  Keep reading for more information about the efforts in Winston and other criminal law news.

This post summarizes opinions issued by the Court of Appeals of North Carolina on January 21, 2020.

The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission released last November a report recommending several changes to the state’s impaired driving laws and correctional policies. The report marked the culmination of more than three years of study that included examination of DWI sentencing and correctional data as well as consideration of input from law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and providers of substance abuse treatment. The report’s fifteen recommendations address issues ranging from pretrial conditions of release for defendants charged with impaired driving to the place of confinement for defendants serving active sentences.

Shea blogged about the new crimes of death by distribution and aggravated death by distribution in G.S. 14-18.4, here. These crimes hit the books this past December, and 2020 will likely see the first prosecutions under the law. The Health In Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University School of Law has put together a toolkit to assist defense attorneys with these types of cases, available here. In full disclosure, the toolkit is part of a larger advocacy effort against these types of laws. Whatever your feelings about the policy reflected in the law, it seems likely to present new challenges for court actors applying it. This post highlights issues identified in the toolkit that may arise in NC prosecutions.

As the New York Times reports, Attorney General William Barr said this week that a shooting at a naval air station in Pensacola, Florida, last month was an act of terrorism and asked Apple to unlock two iPhones used by the shooter.  In early December, a Saudi Air Force cadet training in Florida, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, killed three sailors and wounded eight others after opening fire in a classroom where he was training with the U.S. military to become a pilot.  Attorney General Barr said that Apple had not provided substantive assistance in accessing Alshamrani’s iPhones but Apple disputed that claim, saying that it had been working with the FBI since the shooting occurred and had given investigators access to his iCloud account and other data.  As the Times report notes, the standoff is reminiscent of a 2016 case where Apple refused to break the encryption of a phone used by a shooter in a California terror attack.  Keep reading for more news.