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This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on January 7, 2026. Videos of the defendant sexually assaulting his unconscious wife were authenticated […]
This post summarizes published criminal law and related cases released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during August 2025. Cases of potential interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available here.
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Supreme Court released on August 22, 2025. Previously, summaries were added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, but due to personnel changes and resource limitations, that resource is no longer available. We will continue to post and archive new summaries here on the blog.
Law enforcement officers have long been authorized to search a person incident to the person’s arrest. But the precise scope of that authority has shifted over time. The most recent major case in this area was Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009), which placed new limits on an officer’s ability to search a motor vehicle incident to the arrest of an occupant. Whether Gant has any impact on an officer’s authority to search hand luggage like purses and backpacks has been the subject of considerable controversy. The issue is important given the ubiquity with which men as well as women carry backpacks, satchels, crossbody slings, and many other types of bags. This post discusses searches of such items incident to arrest.
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on July 2, 2025.
Character evidence is one of the most challenging areas of evidence law to navigate, as Jessie Smith observes here. Jessie’s blog features a useful chart to apply Rules 404 and 405 and also links to the bench book chapter.
I find it helpful to see these rules in action with concrete examples. A common context in which the character evidence rules come into play in criminal cases is self-defense cases. This post discusses several common questions that arise, as well as some adjacent issues.
Let’s use a simple hypothetical:
The defendant is charged with shooting the victim outside of a bar after an argument about whether the victim approached the defendant’s girlfriend. The defendant claims that the victim came at him first with a knife.
The questions below deal with what the defendant can elicit about the victim and what the State can elicit about the defendant. As we work through the examples, remember that Rule 404 addresses when character evidence is admissible or inadmissible, and Rule 405 addresses the method of proof for the character evidence (reputation/opinion evidence or specific instances of conduct).
Rules 404 and 405 are included at the end of the post for reference.
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 7, 2025. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.
The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits the use of testimonial hearsay statements by an unavailable witness at a criminal trial, as does its state counterpart in Article I, Sec. 23 of the North Carolina Constitution. A hearsay statement is an out-of-court statement offered for its truth. A statement is testimonial if the primary purpose of the statement was to establish past facts for use at a later prosecution. Ohio v. Clark, 576 U.S. 237, 245 (2015). The Confrontation Clause does not protect against the admission of nontestimonial statements (although hearsay statements still must meet an exception or exemption). In a recent decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court analyzed a challenge to the admission of the defendant’s phone records offered by the State at trial. Overruling the Court of Appeals on the point, the North Carolina Supreme Court found that the phone records were nontestimonial as purely machine-generated data.” The case is a good reminder of the distinctions between testimonial and nontestimonial statements and may have implications for future confrontation issues. Read on for the details.
This post summarizes published criminal law cases released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during January 2025. Cases of potential interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available here.
Around this time of year, many Americans begin to think about Santa. Will he visit? What will he bring? Will Rudolph be guiding his sleigh? As children normally picture him, Santa is an elderly gentleman, dressed in a distinctive red-and-white outfit. He may seem kindly and generous. But upon closer reflection, his activities appear far less benign. This post analyzes his conduct under the criminal law.