North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Twenty five years ago, North Carolina adopted graduated licensing for young drivers, a system founded on the principle that “[s]afe driving requires instruction in driving and experience.” G.S. 20-11(a). The statutory scheme implementing this program grants driving privileges on a limited basis and expands those privileges over time and upon the satisfaction of additional requirements. Id. Accordingly, to receive the first level of a driver’s license – termed a limited provisional license – a driver must have held a limited learner’s permit for at least 12 months. The holder of a limited provisional license generally may not drive unsupervised after 9 p.m. and may not have more than one passenger under the age of 21 in the vehicle. Last month, the General Assembly ratified legislation that loosens these requirements.

Many, perhaps most, law enforcement officers in North Carolina are at will employees. As the saying goes, they may be fired for any reason or for no reason. But when such an officer is fired for malfeasance, and that reason is made public such that potential future employers may be aware of it, the officer may be entitled to a “name clearing hearing” at which he or she can dispute the basis for the termination.

The current news seems to be full of reports of threats against schools. A search of the WRAL website for stories on school threats reveals at least five discrete stories on threats against North Carolina schools in May alone. How can schools and law enforcement be prepared to respond to, and perhaps even prevent, threats against student safety? The National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service (NTAC) has been researching that topic for over 20 years. The results are consistent. Schools that have an effective threat assessment structure in place, casting a wide net to effectively identify youth along a continuum of need and offering a range of responses, are best positioned to address threats and prevent school violence.

A Wake County couple was arrested last week on animal cruelty charges for poisoning three dogs belonging to a neighbor. Ironically, the husband was a donor and board member of a local dog rescue. The rescue group has since announced on Facebook that he has voluntarily resigned. Keep reading for more news.

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 16, 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 summarizes published criminal and related decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during April 2023. Cases that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit decisions are available here.

A decade ago, I wrote a post about the circumstances under which police may stop a person who is carrying a gun openly. A lot has changed since then. The Supreme Court has strengthened the Second Amendment in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. __ (2022). The General Assembly has eliminated the requirement that North Carolina residents obtain a permit before buying a handgun. See S.L. 2023-8. And empirical scholarship suggests that many more Americans are carrying guns on a daily basis. See Ali Awhani-Robar et al., Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015-2019, Am. J. Pub. Health (2022) (finding that in 2019, “approximately 6 million [gun owners carried] daily,” which was “twice the 3 million who did so in 2015”). So it is a good time to revisit the question.

In U.S. Supreme Court news, the Court recently stayed the execution of Richard Glossip. Mr. Glossip has spent 26 years on death row in Oklahoma. This was his ninth scheduled execution date. The state Attorney General agreed with Mr. Glossip that a stay was appropriate, categorizing the sentence as a “grave injustice” amid questions about the integrity of the conviction. The stay was obtained from the Court after the state parole board declined to recommend clemency and other state remedies were exhausted. Read on for more criminal law news.

Suppose that a police officer in a North Carolina city shoots and kills a person in an encounter that began with a traffic stop. There is extensive media coverage of the shooting. The mother of the person who died tells reporters that her son was driving home from work and never made it home. She describes her son as “a hard-working boy who never caused trouble for anybody.” The police chief has seen the recording from the officer’s body-worn camera. That footage shows the suspect jumping from his car and pointing a gun at the officer. The police chief wants to provide a copy of the recording to local reporters. May she do so?

The week began with news that one of the men accused of murder in the death of Wake County Sheriff Deputy Ned Byrd had escaped from a Virginia jail early Sunday morning. Alder Alfonso Marin-Sotelo was being held at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Virginia on federal gun charges when he escaped around 1 a.m. Another inmate, Bruce Callahan, who also has North Carolina connections, escaped late Sunday night.

Unfortunately, jail staff did not notice that either inmate was missing until after 3 a.m. Monday, giving Marin-Sotelo more than a day’s head start. The FBI joined the search Monday and promptly arrested Marin-Sotelo’s sister in High Point alleging that she paid someone to leave in the jail parking lot the getaway car that Marin-Sotelo used to flee the area.

Yesterday Marin-Sotelo was captured by Mexican authorities in Guerrero, more than 2,400 miles from Farmville, Va. He now faces federal charges for escape in addition to the pending state charge for murder. Callahan, who was convicted of federal drug charges, is still at large.