Today’s post is a conversation between Jamie Markham (JM) and Kristen Rosselli (KR), Chief Operating Officer at TROSA. We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how TROSA and other substance use disorder treatment programs are operating during the pandemic, so I thought I would go straight to the source to learn more. This post should not be viewed as an endorsement of TROSA in particular—it just happens to be one of the largest programs in the state, and the one about which I get the most inquiries. As always, my goal is to share up-to-date information so you can make informed decisions for the defendants, clients, and cases that come before you.
“True Threats” After Taylor
Near the end of last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Taylor, 2021-NCSC-164, 866 S.E.2d 740 (2021), and we summarized the opinion here. This post considers the potential impact of Taylor on other offenses involving threatening speech, and addresses a couple lingering questions that may arise in future cases.
News Roundup
Emergency response officials and personnel at the state and local level deserve special recognition this week for their handling of the extremely dangerous fire at a fertilizer production facility in Winston-Salem. As the Winston-Salem Journal reports, a massive fire broke out at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant on Monday night, prompting emergency responders to go door-to-door to warn residents within one mile of the site to evacuate their homes because of the possibility that roughly 600 tons of ammonium nitrate could explode and devastate the surrounding area. The threat of an explosion was diminishing at the time of writing. Keep reading for more news.
Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Feb. 1, 2022)
This post summarizes criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on February 1, 2022. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.
SB300 and Early Warning Systems
State law now requires every law enforcement agency to implement an “early warning system.” What is an early warning system? Do such systems work? And what can small agencies do to comply with the law? Read on to learn more.
Drunk and Disorderly: A Reminder Ahead of the Peak Sports Season
February tends to be a very popular month for sports. The Super Bowl is around the corner, NCAA basketball is heating up with conference games, we are deep into the NBA season, and even the MLB is gearing up for spring training. Fans show their support for and allegiance to teams while watching games at home, in the arena, or at a local bar. Celebration often leads to drinks, drinks occasionally lead to questionable behavior, and questionable behavior frequently leads to consequences. Although it is not a crime in North Carolina to be drunk in public, it is a criminal offense to be drunk and disorderly in public.
Hats Off to Newly Certified Magistrates
Begin reading this post by standing up. Remain standing if you have worked in a position that has required you to interact directly and regularly with members of the public during the pandemic. Otherwise, sit down. Remain standing if this job has required you and your colleagues to (1) apply changing guidance from the state … Read more
News Roundup
Yesterday Justice Stephen Breyer announced that he will retire from the United States Supreme Court when the court takes its summer recess later this year, assuming that his successor has been confirmed by that time. As a profile from SCOTUSblog explains, Breyer was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 after serving for 14 years on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. President Joe Biden made a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court and said yesterday that he intends to follow through on that commitment by the end of February. Keep reading for more news.
New Resource on Juvenile Transfer Procedure
A new Juvenile Law Bulletin, Transfer of Juvenile Delinquency Cases to Superior Court, is now available. Transfer is the procedure used to move a case that begins as a delinquency matter under the original jurisdiction of the juvenile court to criminal court for trial as an adult. The Bulletin outlines when transfer is allowed, and sometimes required; the varying procedures to use to transfer a case based on age at offense and the offense charged; procedure to follow once transfer is ordered; the remand process; place of confinement; and issues related to the appeal process. This blog provides some highlights of the information in the Bulletin.
Fatal Crashes Increase in 2020 and 2021
The negative impacts of the pandemic are far-reaching and well-documented. They include death, illness, disruptions in school and work, strains on the health care system, and backlogs in the courts. But if I had been asked back in March 2020 to predict the impact the pandemic would have on traffic safety, I would have guessed incorrectly. I might have thought that since fewer people would be regularly driving to offices during predictable times of the day, traffic fatalities would decline. I would have been wrong. NC DOT analysis of traffic crashes during the pandemic revealed that while vehicle crashes decreased dramatically following the Governor’s declaration of a state of emergency in March 2020 and continued to remain below 2019 and prior year averages for the rest of the year, fatal crashes (which fortunately are a small subset – less than 1 percent — of total crashes) did not precipitously decline. Instead, they surpassed 2019 numbers and the five-year average during several weeks in the spring, summer and fall of 2020.
As it turns out, this upward trend in fatal crashes was not limited to 2020 or to North Carolina. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published in October 2021 a statistical projection of traffic fatalities nationwide for the first half of that year. See NHTSA, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January – June) of 2021, Traffic Safety Facts: Crash – Stats (October 2021) [hereinafter Early Estimate]. That projection showed a nearly 20 percent increase in fatalities in motor vehicle crashes from the first half of 2020. The calculation – that 20,160 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes from January to June 2021 – represents the highest number of fatalities during the first half of a year since 2006 and the highest half-year percentage increase since 1979, when the Fatality Analysis Reporting System began recording data. NHTSA estimates that fatalities increased in all ten of its regions. The 10 percent increase in North Carolina’s region, Region 3, was second-to-lowest, with the highest increase (26 percent) in Region 10, which includes Alaska, Washington, and other Northwestern states.