The North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Jones, ___ N.C. ___ (2018) on Friday, affirming the court of appeals’ determination that the citation that charged the defendant with transporting an open container of alcoholic beverage, but left out several elements, was legally sufficient to invoke the trial court’s subject matter jurisdiction.
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Brawley, Belk’s, and Charging Crimes in Modern, Southern Style
Belk Department Stores are the Bloomingdales of North Carolina. If someone says they are going to Belk (or, more often, “Belk’s”), you know that they are heading into town to pick up some modern, southern style (or, more likely, something off the wedding registry). And if you hear that so-and-so stole something from your local Belk’s, you can generally picture the scene of crime, since, outside of the big cities, there is generally just one Belk’s in town. So when the court of appeals held last year that a Rowan County indictment alleging that the defendant stole shirts belonging to “Belk’s Department Stores, an entity capable of owning property,” was invalid because it failed to adequately identify the victim of the larceny, it may have left some people in Salisbury (where there is only one Belk’s) scratching their heads.
The state supreme court recently reversed that determination in a per curiam opinion that rejected this kind of technical pleading requirement for larceny of personal property.