Recent Blog Posts Page 53 on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

A group in Massachusetts is working to clear the names of people accused of witchcraft, according to this report from the AP. The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project includes historians and distant relatives of the hundreds of people who were charged, tried for, or convicted of witchery in the state during the 17th century. A similar effort in Connecticut resulted in a legislative resolution of innocence on behalf of the accused and an apology. According to this story, the last witchcraft trial in North America took place in Virigina in 1706. Read on for more criminal law news.

The Pretrial Integrity Act has been in effect for one month now and has generated several questions about the implications of the new provisions. Some of the most frequently asked questions stem from probation violations, particularly how arrests for probation violations are treated under the new law. This post briefly addresses the two most common questions in this context.

Inquisitive police officers regularly ask suspects questions like “Can I take a look at your phone?” or “Can I see your phone?” These on-the-street requests may give rise to legal questions in court. For example, if the suspect hands over the phone in response, does that provide consent for the officer to search the phone? And if so, what is the scope of the search that the officer may conduct? This post explores those issues.

A few weeks ago I wrote about provisions of the 2023 Appropriations Act that affect the judiciary. Among those changes was the creation of ten new special superior court judgeships to be filled by legislative appointment. The General Assembly made seven of those appointments last week. See S.L. 2023-148 (S 761). The list of special superior court judges who are appointed to eight-year terms effective January 1, 2024, follows.

Suppose the defendant is on trial for murder.  He argues he shot the victim in self-defense.

The State elicits testimony from the victim’s father that the victim, who lived at home with his parents, was “always a happy guy.” The father states that he does not allow guns in his home and that, to his knowledge, the victim did not have a gun with him on the day he was shot or have a gun at any other time.

Counsel for the defendant then asks the father:  After your son died, did you see pictures on his cell phone of him with his friends holding guns?

The State objects. The defendant argues that, while the evidence would otherwise be inadmissible, the State opened the door to its admission.

How should the trial court rule?

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the Supreme Court of North Carolina released on October 20, 2023. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.

This post covers recent statutory changes related to the custodial interrogation of youth who are 16 and 17 years of age and to the issuance and execution of secure custody orders in delinquency cases. All of these changes are contained in Session law 2023-114 and will apply to offenses committed on or after December 1, 2023.

Normally, the Fourth Amendment requires that police obtain a search warrant before officers may search a person’s phone or computer. But the person can waive his or her Fourth Amendment rights by consenting to a search without a warrant. The scope of a person’s consent is determined by what a “typical reasonable person [would] have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect.” Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248 (1991). Applying that test, if an officer asks a suspect for consent to search the suspect’s home, and the suspect agrees, does that allow the officer to search any digital devices located inside the residence?

The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the search of Google users’ keyword history to identify suspects in a 2020 fatal arson fire. The Court cautioned it was not making a “broad proclamation” on the constitutionality of such warrants and emphasized it was ruling on the facts of just this one case. At issue before the court was a search warrant from Denver police requiring Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched over 15 days for the address of the home that was set on fire, killing five people.

According to this AP News article, one suspect asked the court to throw the evidence out because it violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures by being overbroad and not being targeted against a specific person suspected of a crime. The Court ruled that the suspect had a constitutionally protected privacy interest in his Google search history even though it was only connected with an IP address and not his name. While assuming that the warrant was “constitutionally defective” for not specifying an “individualized probable cause,” the Court said it would not throw out the evidence because police were acting in good faith under what was known about the law at the time.

Keep reading for more criminal law news.

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on October 17, 2023. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.