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My colleague, Sara DePasquale, and I were excited to release a new Juvenile Law Bulletin two weeks ago—Delinquency and DSS Custody without Abuse, Neglect, or Dependency: How Does that Work? We were also exhausted. While the laws that allow for courts to order juveniles into DSS custody in a delinquency proceeding are short, their implications are broad and complex. Sara’s blog announcing the bulletin, Extra! Extra! Read All About It! New Juvenile Law Bulletin – Delinquency and DSS Custody without Abuse, Neglect, or Dependency: How Does that Work?, provides some suggestions about reading the bulletin in bite-sized chunks. Now that readers have had a chance to do that, let’s focus on a few of the key points for delinquency practitioners.

• the proceeding remains a delinquency proceeding although the juvenile is in the custody of DSS;
• the only attorney who will represent a juvenile placed in DSS custody through a delinquency proceeding is the juvenile’s counsel in the delinquency matter;
• termination of probation does not automatically terminate DSS custody; and
• implementation of the Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. “raise the age”) could result in a new challenge for DSS placements.

While preparing to teach a recent class about search warrants for digital devices, I spoke with a number of experts in digital forensics. Each conversation was very helpful. Almost all of them touched on an issue I’d never previously considered: whether search warrants for cell phones do or may include the authority to search connected cloud services.

As the News Roundup noted last week, bills in the General Assembly that would require Sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts are causing some controversy.  The News & Observer reports that the Sheriffs of Mecklenburg, Buncombe, and Wake counties attended a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting this week to express their opposition to House Bill 370, proposed legislation that essentially requires local law enforcement officials to cooperate with ICE and provides a mechanism to remove officials from office for failing or refusing to do so.  This piece from the Daily Advance says that some Sheriffs in other jurisdictions have no problems with the bill.  Keep reading for more news.

A new report evaluates the impact of Mecklenburg County’s bail reforms. Cindy Redcross et al., MDRC Center for Criminal Justice Research, Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms That Use the Public Safety Assessment: Effects in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (2019) [hereinafter Evaluation]. The big take away? Mecklenburg released more defendants but did not see a significant increase in failures to appear (FTAs) or new criminal charges during the pretrial period. Id. at 2. Read on for details.

For many years, our colleague Jessie Smith prepared summaries of appellate cases and sent them out via the School of Government’s criminal law listserv. Because she is transitioning her work to focus on criminal justice policy, she will not be summarizing cases anymore, but several of us will collaboratively carry on the service. We will continue to send the summaries out using the listserv, and we are also going to post them here on the blog.  Summaries of North Carolina Court of Appeals opinions from June 18, 2019 are provided below.

Last month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals decided State v. Copley, __ N.C. App. __, 2019 WL 1996441 (May 7, 2019), in which a divided panel held that the trial court abused its discretion by overruling the defendant’s objections to the prosecutor’s remarks about race during closing argument. For that reason, the Court vacated the defendant’s first degree murder conviction. This post discusses the law governing when parties in a criminal trial may discuss issues of race, as well as emerging strategies for mitigating the effects of implicit racial bias on decision-makers.

Some of you have probably seen the School’s bench card on Criminal Monetary Obligations (it is available here). It may sometimes be helpful as a background reference, but it’s not set up in a way that helps a court put the law into action.

You need a form.

On Wednesday, Craig Stephen Hicks pleaded guilty to murdering Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha in a Chapel Hill home in February 2015; he received three consecutive life sentences.  On a February evening, Hicks angrily confronted the victims at a condo that Barakat and Yusor shared in the same community where Hicks lived.  Under the pretense of furthering an ongoing parking dispute, Hicks almost immediately drew a handgun and fatally shot the victims, each of whom was Muslim.  Barakat was a student at UNC Dental School, where Yusor had recently been accepted as well, and Razan, visiting the couple for dinner, was attending NC State.  Keep reading for more news.

Various criminal law provisions use the word “minor.” What is a minor?

Suppose the State is prosecuting a defendant for the sexual assault of a young child. Though the child has been identified by name in the arrest warrant and investigative reports provided to the defendant, the State would prefer not to name the victim in the indictment. May it refer to the victim in that document as “Victim #1”?