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Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Bedient, a significant post-Rodriguez opinion on traffic stops. The court ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to extend a stop by a few seconds to ask the driver for consent to search. This post summarizes and analyzes the case.
Earlier this year, the News Roundup noted that the United States Supreme Court held in Hurst v. Florida that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme was unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment because it permitted a judge to increase a defendant’s maximum authorized punishment based on the judge’s own factfinding rather than that of a jury. The Defender Manual has an overview of the development of the Court’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence on this issue here. Now the Florida Supreme Court has to decide what to do about the nearly 400 inmates awaiting execution who were sentenced under the unconstitutional scheme. The Palm Beach Post reports that former Florida Supreme Court justices were “among a handful of leading lawyers,” including two former American Bar Association presidents, calling for the court to impose life sentences on all of the inmates in a blanket commutation.
Closer to home, the North Carolina Court of Appeals decided that old G.S. 14-27.4A(c) (now codified as G.S. 14-27.28(c)), a statute which “purports to provide the trial court with the unfettered ability to lengthen a defendant’s sentence . . . with no input from a jury,” is unconstitutional based on the same line of Supreme Court cases implicated in Hurst. The case is State v. Singletary, and, as the opinion notes at page 28, Jessie and John have predicted for some time that the North Carolina statute likely was unconstitutional. Keep reading for more news:
I’ve written before about whether a court may order a person to provide a password to a computer or a passcode to a phone to enable an officer to complete a lawful search, such as one pursuant to a search warrant. But passwords and passcodes are so old-fashioned. The cool kids are all using biometric data like fingerprints to secure their devices. So, may a person be required to unlock his or her device using a biometric identifier? Yes, said one court recently.
The N&O series: Deadly Force. Today the News and Observer published the last article of its four part investigative series Deadly Force, a series that chronicles numerous physical confrontations between Harnett County sheriff’s deputies and citizens and the deaths and injuries that resulted.
There seem to be fewer and fewer reported decisions about criminal discovery in North Carolina. A recent North Carolina Supreme Court decision finding a discovery violation by the prosecution, State v. Davis (Apr. 15, 2016), made me wonder why. This post reviews the evolution of North Carolina’s criminal discovery laws, which has brought relative calm to this area of law, along with the decision in Davis, which deals with a recurring issue about disclosure of expert opinion.
The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission and the Division of Adult Correction recently released their Correctional Program Evaluation: Offenders Placed on Probation or Released from Prison in FY 2013—known better as the recidivism report. Every biennial report is interesting—who wouldn’t want to know how present sentencing choices affect future crime?—but this report is especially interesting because it is the first one to include a sizable number of defendants sentenced and supervised after Justice Reinvestment. We can begin to see if the law is working as intended.
The North Carolina General Assembly’s short session began Monday. On the first day of the session, supporters and opponents of HB2 held well attended dueling rallies in Raleigh according to this report from the Charlotte Business Journal. The Wall Street Journal has a national perspective on the rallies here. Democratic legislators filed a bill to repeal HB2, but Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger has stated that repeal is not on the Republican agenda. The News and Observer reports that 54 protestors opposed to HB2 were arrested inside the Legislative building after refusing to leave House Speaker Tim Moore’s office and the area around it. Keep reading for more news.
The North Carolina law making it a felony for some sex offenders to go within 300 feet of certain locations intended for children is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment. Last week, a federal judge permanently enjoined all North Carolina district attorneys from enforcing the law.
Author’s note: I added the conclusory paragraph at the end of this post shortly after its initial publication in response to helpful questions from readers about the significance of State v. Godwin and State v. Torrence.
Like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, horizontal gaze nystagmus is a mouthful. Unlike Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, not just anyone can utter horizontal gaze nystagmus and sound wise beyond her years. Two recent court of appeals opinions hold that that a witness be qualified as an expert before testifying about the results of a horizontal gaze nystagmus test.
The United States Supreme Court and North Carolina appellate courts have ruled that a defendant must make an unambiguous request for counsel under Miranda to bar an officer’s custodial interrogation. A week ago, the North Carolina Court of Appeals in State v. Taylor (April 19, 2016), ruled that the defendant did not make an unambiguous request for counsel under Miranda. This post provides the background to this issue and discusses the Taylor ruling.