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Ordinarily, a pleading that fails to accurately allege every element of the offense is defective and is treated as a jurisdictional nullity. See, e.g., G.S. 15A-924(a)(5) (“as a prerequisite to its validity, an indictment must allege every essential element of the criminal offense it purports to charge”); State v. Harris, 219 N.C. App. 590 (2012) (indictment is invalid and confers no jurisdiction on the trial court if it “fails to state some essential and necessary element of the offense”).

The limited exception to this rule is the somewhat relaxed pleading standard for a citation, which may still be sufficient even if it fails to state every element, as long as it reasonably identifies the crime charged. Shea Denning and Jeff Welty covered that issue in a series of posts available here, here, and here.

Several recent cases from the Court of Appeals have offered a good reminder about another important corollary to the general rule for pleadings:  although an indictment must “allege every element” in order to be valid, the state has quite a bit of flexibility in how that standard can be met.

North Carolina’s courts are closed today for Veterans Day, so although UNC is open, we won’t run a substantive post. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to thank all veterans, including those who work in and with the court system. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended WWI, making it an appropriate time to reflect on the sacrifices veterans have made throughout the nation’s history.

While reading about Veterans Day, I happened on this article, which addresses the role of veterans on the Supreme Court of the United States. The whole piece is worth reading, but for those interested in an executive summary, it makes two major points.

With the midterm elections and the resignation of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, there was a lot of news this week.  At the time of writing, however, those stories were being reported below the fold as the nation grappled again with the uniquely American recurring tragedy of a mass shooting.  As the L.A. Times reports, Ian David Long killed 12 people and injured 18 others at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, on Wednesday night before killing himself.  Many of the victims were college students at the bar for line-dancing lessons and birthday celebrations.  Keep reading for more news.

In February 1843, Daniel M’Naughten was tried in London for the murder of Edward Drummond, the private secretary to Prime Minister Robert Peel. M’Naughten was laboring under the delusion that Prime Minister Peel was part of a system that was persecuting him. Only by shooting Peel could he end the torment. Drummond became the victim of these delusions when M’Naughten mistook him for Peel. The trial of M’Naughten, the verdict of insanity, and the aftermath made legal history.

Last week Shea led a North Carolina Judicial College class on DWI Procedures for Judges and Magistrates. One day of the program included a field trip to DART Cherry in Goldsboro, North Carolina’s substance abuse treatment program for male probationers. The group was kind enough to let me tag along. Today’s post gives a short trip report and addresses some frequently asked questions related to DART Cherry.

Schools across the country experienced a “dramatic uptick” in threats of school-related violence following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018. One set of researchers reported that in the thirty days after the Parkland shooting, threats and incidents of violence in schools nationally increased by more than 300 percent–from an average of 13.2 threats and incidents per day to 59.4 per day. The national trend played out in North Carolina as well, with schools in several North Carolina counties responding to several reported threats of violence in the weeks following the Parkland massacre. When such threats were made, it wasn’t always clear whether they amounted to a crime. The actions often were a poor fit for the two most obvious candidates: communicating threats (because the threat was not always communicated to the person threatened) and making a false report concerning mass violence on educational property (because it wasn’t always clear that the person who made the threat had made a report that the person knew to be false).

The General Assembly responded last June to this gap in the criminal code by enacting a new crime, communicating a threat of mass violence on educational property, effective for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2018.

What’s the most inconsequential criminal offense in North Carolina? My personal favorite is sale of immature apples, a Class 3 misdemeanor under G.S. 106-189.2. But take a look at the list of Class 3 misdemeanors compiled by the Sentencing Commission and make your case in the comments.

Whatever your answer, now consider this: could a court properly issue a search warrant if there were probable cause to believe that evidence of a very minor crime was in a person’s home? Suppose that a sheriff’s office receives a report that a vendor is selling immature apples at a farmers’ market. A deputy applies for a search warrant for the home of the vendor in question on the basis that she likely has receipts and other evidence of the crime in her house. May a judicial official issue the warrant? Or are there some offenses that are so minor that the “cure” of the search warrant is worse than the “disease” of allowing the crime to go unpunished?

On Saturday morning a man armed with an AR-15 style rifle and several handguns killed 11 people and wounded 6 others, including 4 police officers, in an attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Reports indicate that the perpetrator, Robert D. Bowers, shouted anti-Semitic slurs during the incident and the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that the shooting was believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.  Bowers, who was taken into custody after exchanging fire with law enforcement officers, has been charged with numerous federal and state offenses including hate crimes and murder.  Keep reading for more news.

My recent criminal justice class involved forensics so, being in London, it seemed only fitting to take a look at Sherlock Holmes and his methods. What was the impact of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character on the development of forensics? What can we learn from Holmes more than 130 years after his first appearance in the classic A Study in Scarlet?

Post-release supervision is a lot more common than it used to be. There were about 2,000 on post-release supervision back in 2011 before the Justice Reinvestment Act added PRS for lower-level (Class F–I) felons. Today there are over 12,500 people on post-release supervision, and PRS revocations account for more entries to prison than probation revocations. Nevertheless, some aspects of PRS still seem unfamiliar. Today’s post takes a quick look at a frequently asked question related to what happens when a person is returned to prison for a violation of PRS.