Recent blog posts

On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a long-awaited opinion in Carpenter v. United States. The Court held that when law enforcement obtains long-term cell site location information from a suspect’s service provider, it conducts a Fourth Amendment search that normally requires a warrant. Although the majority opinion states that it “is a narrow one,” the dissenting Justices and some scholars see it as a seismic shift that may have many aftershocks. I’ll summarize the case and then use former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s famous approach to address the “known knowns,” the “known unknowns,” and the “unknown unknowns” after Carpenter.

WRAL reports that there were two attacks in as many days on staff members at Central Prison this week.  The report says that the attacks have been attributed to the same group of inmates.  In one incident, several inmates refused orders from staff and then punched officers who responded to the situation.  In the other, two inmates assaulted a Brent Soucier, a Unit Manager with 19 years of experience at the prison, with a homemade weapon.  Soucier was taken to the hospital for treatment of a serious injury and is said to be in stable condition.  Keep reading for more news.

Today’s post considers when a court should—and sometimes must—evaluate a defendant’s ability to pay a monetary obligation in a criminal case.

A couple of recent court of appeals opinions emphasize a bright-line rule in cases involving traffic stops. An officer who observes a driver commit a traffic violation may stop the driver to address that violation, even when the violation is minor and the officer has elected to respond to the observed violation because she suspects that other unsubstantiated criminal activity may be afoot.

Often, when the defendant complains on appeal of a constitutional violation at trial, there must be some showing of prejudice in order for the defendant to obtain relief. Even if a defendant shows that a violation occurred, the State usually has an opportunity to demonstrate that the error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. If the error is unlikely to have affected the result within the greater context of the trial, the defendant is not entitled to relief under harmless error review. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967). Some errors, however, are deemed so serious and capable of affecting the fundamental integrity of the trial that harmless error review does not apply. These types of “structural” errors typically entitle the defendant to a new trial without any showing of prejudice and without regard to how the error may have affected the verdict.

I was reading a WRAL article about the District Attorney wife-hiring trial taking place in Raleigh when the following passage caught my attention: “Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said that, if [former District Attorney] Wallace Bradsher testifies, he cannot simply deliver a monologue from the witness stand and must pose questions to himself to give prosecutors a chance to object to potential testimony.” I hadn’t previously considered how testimony from a self-represented defendant would work. I looked into it, and this post summarizes what I learned.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice that wounded five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise who remained in critical condition for months before returning to Congress.  This year’s game was held last night at National’s Park, with Scalise starting at second base.  As noted in this report from Washington news outlet NBC 4, there have been many high-profile mass shootings in the year that has passed since the attack and national opinion on gun legislation remains divided.  Keep reading for more news. 

Under the Crawford Confrontation Clause rule, testimonial statements by witnesses who aren’t subject to cross-examination at trial can’t be admitted unless the witness is unavailable and there has been a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Smith, A Guide to Crawford and the Confrontation Clause, in NC Superior Court Judges Benchbook (UNC School of Government Aug. 2015). In the Davis case, the US Supreme Court set out a two-part rule for determining whether or not statements are testimonial for purposes of the Confrontation Clause:

Two recent North Carolina Court of Appeals opinions help delineate when an officer has probable cause to believe a driver is driving while impaired. In each case, the court of appeals reversed the trial court’s determination that the officer lacked probable cause.

The defense files a motion to suppress evidence in superior court, and the judge sets the matter for a hearing. The parties and their witnesses show up, ready to give testimony and make their arguments. The judge opens court and asks a simple question: “who’s going first, the state or the defense?”

A view I’ve often heard expressed is that the state has to go first, because even though it was the defendant’s motion which prompted the hearing, “the state always has the burden” and the party with the burden goes first.

That’s generally a correct statement about the burden of proof, but the corresponding rule about order of presentation is a little more… flexible.