A UNC School of Government Blog
I’m still not done with the last round of court of appeals and North Carolina Supreme Court opinions, but I found a little gem in one of the high court’s opinions. For the first time, the state supreme court has addressed the search of a cell phone incident to arrest. I’ve blogged about this issue … Read more
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachussetts, as most readers of this blog know, is the United States Supreme Court’s latest pronouncement on the Confrontation Clause. Generally, it holds that forensic laboratory reports — like chemical analyses of drugs, DNA tests, and so on — are “testimonial” for Confrontation Clause purposes. That means a laboratory report generally may not … Read more
Last week the court of appeals decided State v. Wagoner, its latest case involving satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Mr. Wagoner, who had previously been convicted of multiple reportable sex crimes in 1996, pled no contest to another one (indecent liberties with a child) in 2005. He received a suspended sentence for the 2005 … Read more
I am constantly amazed at the innovative work my colleagues are doing. A new and incredibly useful tool — but one that is not widely known — is Jessie Smith’s criminal case compendium, available here. It organizes important criminal cases by category, so you can look at the section on indictments if you have an … Read more
Although there’s been a ton of relevant news since the last News Roundup, the most timely and interesting stories all relate to claims of actual innocence. To start with, Joseph Abbitt of Winston-Salem was exonerated yesterday. After serving 14 years for raping two teenage girls — both of whom positively identified him as the perpetrator … Read more
After my earlier post about nonstatutory aggravating factors, a reader took me up on my offer to write about nonstatutory mitigating factors. In addition to the twenty mitigating factors spelled out in G.S. 15A-1340.16(e), the law allows for “any other mitigating factor reasonably related to the purposes of sentences.” Procedurally, nonstatutory mitigating factors are a … Read more
Last Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Locklear, holding, in part, that a Crawford violation occurred when the trial court admitted opinion testimony regarding a victim’s cause of death and identity. Because the case raises questions about the viability of offering a “substitute analyst” to avoid a Crawford problem, I offer this … Read more
The state supreme court issued a batch of opinions last Friday, and while several of them are notable, the one that has received the most attention is Britt v. North Carolina. (You can see the News and Observer’s story here, and a couple of commentators’ views here and here.) Barney Britt pled guilty to PWISD … Read more
Our court system assumes that people can tell whether other people are telling the truth by evaluating the demeanor of the other people. This is true in a wide range of contexts. Jurors are encouraged to consider the demeanor of each witness in deciding whether to credit the witness’s testimony. N.C.P.I. — Crim. 101.15 (referring … Read more
I’m working on revising Arrest Warrant and Indictment Forms, a manual that provides charging language for several hundred common offenses. In the course of working on language for possession of stolen goods and receiving stolen goods, I noticed a couple of things that might be of interest. First, there are two statutes that criminalize each … Read more