Recent Blog Posts Page 30 on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004) that any contested fact that increases the defendant’s sentence beyond the statutory maximum must be submitted to the jury and found beyond a reasonable doubt. Shortly thereafter,  the General Assembly amended G.S. 20-179 to require judges in superior court cases to submit contested aggravating factors during impaired driving sentencing to the jury. Practically, this means that after a person is found guilty of impaired driving, if they are contesting properly alleged aggravating factors, there must be a sentencing hearing before the jury to determine any aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. The North Carolina Supreme Court considered in State v. King, ___ N.C. ___, 906 S.E.2d 808 (2024) what happens if a judge finds contested aggravating factors without submitting them to the jury.

The Associated Press reports here that “President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family.” This post discusses President Biden’s decision.

[Editor’s note: The legislative summaries linked in this post were updated on December 12, 2024, to reflect legislation enacted after this post first appeared.] Looking for some interesting topics to discuss over Thanksgiving dinner? The criminal summaries for this legislative session are now available and can be accessed here.

When Session Law (S.L.) 2024-17 takes effect next Sunday, December 1, cases in which a Class A – E felony offense is alleged to have been committed at age 16 or 17 will originate under criminal jurisdiction. This means that the juveniles involved in these cases will be processed as defendants in criminal proceedings and not under the procedure for initiating a juvenile delinquency proceeding. At first blush, it may seem that this change will bring local procedure back to what it was before most offenses committed at ages 16 and 17 were brought under original juvenile jurisdiction (with the implementation of the Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act in 2019). However, since 2019, both federal and state law changed in ways that shifted the landscape of arrest processing and confinement of minors. This blog explores these changes and their impact on implementation of S.L. 2024-17.

For the final installment of this series on confidential informants, motions to reveal identity, and discovery, we will look at a unique statute in North Carolina concerning when the identity of a confidential informant (CI) must be revealed: G.S. 15A-978(b). This statute only applies to motions to suppress, rather than trial. Recall back to Part I of this series, which addressed Roviaro v. U.S., 353 U.S. 53 (1957). Roviaro established the basic factors to consider when deciding whether the State must disclose the identity of the CI to the defendant to ensure a fair trial. Another U.S. Supreme Court case decided ten years later, however, McCray v. State of Ill., 386 U.S. 300 (1967), addressed the separate but related question of when the defendant is entitled to learn the CI’s identity to have a fair opportunity to litigate a motion to suppress.

At a motion to suppress, the considerations are somewhat different from trial. The last several posts addressed the question of when testimony from the CI is material in determining whether or not the defendant is guilty. In contrast, the question at the motion to suppress stage is not the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The question in CI cases is usually whether a search or seizure violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. The issues to be decided may be whether law enforcement had good reason to rely on information provided by the CI, whether law enforcement corroborated the information, or whether the officers are being truthful about their interactions with the CI. G.S. 15A-978(b) addresses a related, but narrow question: can we rely on the officer’s assertion that the CI exists?

After serving 30 years in prison for killing her two sons, Susan Smith appeared Wednesday before a parole board in South Carolina to ask for her freedom. Smith made international news in 1994 when she claimed she was carjacked by a black man who drove away with her two sons in the car. For nine days, Smith and her husband appeared on national television asking for her children to be returned to her. It was later discovered that she was having an affair with the wealthy son of her employer, and that her paramour blamed her children as the reason they could not be together. Smith ultimately confessed to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into a lake with her two sons secured inside. After hearing from Smith, her ex-husband, his family members, prosecutors, and law enforcement, the parole board denied her request. She is now eligible to appear before the parole board every two years. Read on for more criminal law news.

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on November 19, 2024. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.

Years ago, I wrote this post about when evidence of an officer’s prior misconduct must be disclosed by the prosecution as material impeachment information under Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972). The Fourth Circuit recently decided a case on point. This post discusses the Fourth Circuit case and other recent authority. In essence, it updates my previous post.

A 23-year-old NC State University student was charged with felony assault last Friday after a week-long flurry of rush-hour shootings along I-40 and near I-440. Andrew Graney’s arrest came after Raleigh police scrambled to find the shooter who fired into eight cars and four houses, all in southwest Raleigh along I-40 between last Monday and Thursday. Raleigh Police Chief announced Thursday two “persons of interest” were detained Thursday afternoon. The second person detained was released and not charged.

Police found Graney after surveillance camera captured footage of a gray Hyundai Sonata at the scene of one of the residences hit by gunfire. Search warrants showed police seized a laptop computer, a .45-caliber Llama handgun and case with live ammunition, spent shell casings, and a box of ammunition from Graney’s home and car. Graney faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and discharging a weapon into an occupied dwelling or vehicle. He is being held without bond in the Wake County jail.

I work in the field of criminal law and have penchant for Southern Gothic (and also I am human) so of course I followed Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 trial for the murder of his wife and son. The story was sensational, and the facts spooled out like an old-school television mini-series, weaving a tale in which a small-town southern family dynasty was strangled by the privilege that once helped it flourish. But if you watched the new-school Netflix series, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

What I am here to tell you about is The Devil at His Elbow, a non-fiction work by Valerie Bauerlien, which chronicles the Murdaugh family through five generations, the intertwined history of Hampton County, South Carolina, where they lived, and the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of Alex Murdaugh for murder and numerous financial crimes. Bauerlien, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, attended and reported on both the murder trial and the court proceedings in the fraud cases, and her recounting of those matters, including the investigation and the attorneys’ trial tactics, is a riveting read. But the aspect of the work that I found most compelling–indeed haunting–was the institutionalized behavior that affronted my notions about justice and fair play, the role of the courts as the protector of individual rights, and the inviolate right to trial by jury. Bauerlien exposed the manner in which generations of Murdaugh men co-opted their public positions and exploited the justice system to serve their own ends. Until Alex’s downfall in 2023, this behavior had gone unchecked for nearly a century.