Recent blog posts - 216 of 396

Today’s post gives my best answers to a few frequently asked questions about appeals of probation violation hearings.

Before I became a lawyer, I finished everything ahead of time. Term paper? Completed two weeks early. Trip? Packed a week in advance. Taxes? Filed in February. Alas, those days are nearly two decades behind me. Now I squeak in just under the wire with everything I do—including my weekly blog posts. I could proffer a host of reasons, but don’t think I need to so long as I meet the deadline. My modus operandi may explain why I was particularly troubled by the traffic stop in State v. Baskins, ___ N.C. App. ___ (May 17, 2016).

I am working on a new edition of the self-defense book I wrote in 1996. As in the story of Rip Van Winkle, a lot has changed in twenty years. Most notably, the General Assembly adopted new statutes in 2011 on self-defense and related defenses. This blog post addresses one of those provisions, in G.S. 14-51.4, which disqualifies a person from relying on self-defense while committing, attempting to commit, or escaping from the commission of a felony. North Carolina appellate courts have not yet considered the meaning of this provision. Cf. State v. Rawlings, ___ N.C. App. ___, 762 S.E.2d 909 (2014) (felony disqualification did not apply to case in which defendant’s offense predated enactment of provision, and court expressed no opinion on proper construction of provision).

Last year, a panel of the Fourth Circuit decided United States v. Graham, 796 F.3d 332 (4^th Cir. 2015). The panel ruled that “the government conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment when it obtains and inspects a cell phone user’s historical [cell site location information (CSLI)] for an extended period of time. . . . Its inspection by the government, therefore, requires a warrant, unless an established exception to the warrant requirement applies.” I discussed Graham here and here. Last week, the en banc Fourth Circuit reversed the panel, ruling that under the third-party doctrine, a cell phone subscriber has no reasonable expectation of privacy in historical cell site location information that he or she shares with a service provider, so it isn’t a Fourth Amendment “search” when law enforcement obtains such information, and a warrant isn’t required. The en banc opinion is here. This post discusses the opinion and considers the possibility of Supreme Court review or action by Congress.

Reuters reports that following rehearing en banc of a case decided last year, the Fourth Circuit has ruled that police do not need a warrant to obtain historical cell site location information from cell phone service providers.  The majority opinion concluded that the third party doctrine precludes a person from claiming a legitimate expectation of privacy in the location information because it has been voluntarily conveyed to the service provider.  The court’s opinion is available here.  Keep reading for more news.

[Editor’s note: Emily Coward, the author of today’s post, is an attorney who works with the indigent defense education team at the School of Government. She is a co-author of Raising Issues of Race in North Carolina Criminal Cases.]

In Foster v. Chatman, a 7-1 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court held that prosecutors in Georgia discriminated on the basis of race during jury selection in a 1987 death penalty trial. This post explains the ruling and considers its impact on Batson challenges in North Carolina.

There aren’t very many federal cases about North Carolina probation. When we get one, I’m inclined to write about it. In Jones v. Chandrasuwan, __ F.3d __ (4th Cir. 2016), the Fourth Circuit announced a new rule about the level of suspicion required to arrest a probationer for a suspected probation violation.

Memorial Day weekend isn’t technically the beginning of summer, but it feels like it. Temperatures rise and many families head east toward water on Friday afternoons. That’s what my family did last Friday. Given that I try to stay reasonably informed about the law and I read my local paper, I thought I was well prepared to keep all of us on the beach and out of the slammer through the course of the weekend.

It turns out that there are a lot of rules that responsible adults and parents can break on vacation.  I’m not just talking about bedtime rules and no-ice-cream-before-dinner rules.  I’m talking about the criminal kind—the ones that can land you in jail or at least in a district court down east on a hot Monday morning.  I’ve written about a few of these rules before.  And this recent article in the News and Observer put everyone on notice that children under 16 cannot drive golf carts.  But I’ve recently learned a new rule: You cannot have a mixed drink on the beach.

As the Baltimore Sun reports, a criminal trial against one of the Baltimore police officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray last year ended this week with the officer, Edward Nero, being acquitted on all charges.  According to the report, Nero’s acquittal on several misdemeanors came after a five-day bench trial that involved a novel theory of assault based on Nero detaining Gray without justification.  The Baltimore Sun also has an opinion piece from former Baltimore police officers that argues that Nero, characterized as having only a tangential role in the incident that culminated in Gray’s death, should not have been criminally charged.  Cases against other officers facing more serious charges are scheduled to be tried in the future.  Keep reading for more news.    

The district attorney decides when to defer prosecution. But if that deferral includes probation under G.S. 15A-1341(a1), the court has a role in the process—including what to do in response to a violation of the deferred prosecution agreement. Sometimes the State and the judge are on the same page. Sometimes they aren’t.