Recent Blog Posts Page 245 on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The Fourth Amendment protects the home as well as its curtilage, which is defined as the area immediately surrounding the home and associated with it. Recently, the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Grice, 2015 WL 304075 (Jan. 23, 2015), was confronted with a Fourth Amendment issue involving the curtilage. The court held, reversing the court of appeals, ___ N.C. App. ___, 733 S.E.2d 354 (2012), that officers who were validly on the curtilage of a residence to conduct a knock and talk did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they saw marijuana plants 15 yards away on the curtilage and warrantlessly seized them.

Shea wrote yesterday about the top news around here: the killing of three Muslim university students by a man who lived in the same Chapel Hill apartment complex as the victims. It’s part of a string of tragic events for university students in the state, including the deaths of nine Appalachian State University students since September, the murder of UNC student Faith Hedgepeth in 2012, and, farther back, the killings of student body president Eve Carson of UNC and graduate student Abhijit Mahato of Duke in 2008. Terrible for the students, obviously, and of course crushing for their parents. Tough times.

The murder of three young, gifted students in Chapel Hill Tuesday evening has generated a local, national, and international outpouring of grief and outrage. Deah Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, were shot dead in the Finley Forest condominium where newlyweds Deah and Yusor lived. A neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, fled the area after the shooting, but later turned himself into law enforcement officers. Hicks is charged with first degree murder in their deaths, and is being held without bond in Raleigh’s Central Prison. Police say that the killings were motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute about, of all things, parking. Nevertheless, many, including Yusor and Razan’s father, suspect it also may have been motivated by the fact that the three were Muslims. Yusor regularly wore a headscarf—an outward manifestation of her faith.

The domestic violence case against Carolina Panther Greg Hardy was dismissed this week. According to the Charlotte Observer, a principal reason was that the alleged victim, Hardy’s ex-girlfriend, refused to cooperate and avoided service of a subpoena. Prosecutors also told the judge that the alleged victim had reached a civil settlement with Hardy. To be clear, no one has said that the settlement agreement required the alleged victim not to cooperate. But could the agreement contain such a provision?

These days, you can find an online instructional video for pretty much anything. Cooking techniques, auto repair, differential calculus. Why not criminal sentencing? Today’s post is my first attempt at […]

I’ve recently been asked several variants of this question: If a suspect sells drugs to an undercover officer on multiple occasions over a few days or weeks, can the drug quantities involved in each sale be aggregated to reach the trafficking threshold? That led me to spend some time looking at the more general issue of when multiple caches of drugs can be combined. This post lays out the law.

The General Assembly is gearing up for the long session, and the AOC has a new lobbyist: former Rep. Tom Murry of Morrisville will be the AOC’s “chief legal counsel for governmental affairs,” according to this News and Observer story. Murry is a Republican and an attorney, and his main priority likely will be securing more resources for the courts.

In the course of robbing a convenience store, a man restrains a 17-year-old clerk. Suppose the parties work out a plea to second-degree kidnapping. Everything is fine until the judge advises the defendant of the maximum permissible punishment for his Class E crime: 136 months. “136 months?” his lawyer said, puzzled. “I thought it would be 88.” “It would be,” the court replied, “if this crime didn’t require registration as a sex offender.”

Myra Lynne Combs beat her DWI charges in court. The trial court held that the officer who stopped her didn’t have a lawful reason to do so. So the trial court suppressed all the evidence resulting from the stop, and the State dismissed the charges. But Combs’ license was revoked for a year anyway based on her refusal to submit to a breath test after she was arrested. Combs didn’t think that was right, so she took her case to the state court of appeals.

Recently a caller asked: Does the fact that the defendant was found in possession of goods five days after they were stolen create an inference that he stole them? The answer: It depends.