Evidence

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Disclosure of Child Welfare Records in Cases Where DSS is Not a Party

Child welfare records maintained by a department of social services (DSS) contain sensitive information that parties in various proceedings are often interested in seeing. A complex web of state and federal law governs the disclosure of these records – more than I can cover here. For purposes of this post, it’s sufficient to know that G.S. 108A-80 is a broadly applicable confidentiality statute that applies to DSS and covers client information generally. Absent limited statutory exceptions, G.S. 108A-80(a) prohibits disclosure of information related to individuals who apply for or receive public assistance or social services, including child welfare services.

Child welfare information is also subject to an additional set of confidentiality restrictions under Chapter 7B of the North Carolina General Statutes. For example, G.S. 7B-302 makes information that is obtained by DSS related to a juvenile’s alleged abuse, neglect, or dependency (A/N/D) confidential. Similarly, G.S. 7B-2901(b) requires DSS to maintain confidential records of juveniles it has in its custody. Both statutes provide exceptions to the confidentiality requirement.

This post explores how the exceptions in G.S. 7B-302 and 7B-2901(b) apply when a party—either in a North Carolina civil case where DSS is not a party or in a criminal or delinquency matter—wants DSS child welfare records about someone other than themselves. Note that in this post I use the term ‘DSS records’ to refer to child welfare records maintained by DSS, including those from juvenile A/N/D proceedings.

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State v. Moore: Some Foundation Required for DRE Testimony

In light of the recent Court of Appeals opinion State v. Moore, this post is a follow-up to the 2018 blog post State v. Fincher: No Foundation Required for DRE Testimony by my colleague Shea Denning.

Rule 702 of the North Carolina Rules of Evidence governs the admissibility of expert testimony. Rule 702(a) requires the proponent to show that the expert testimony is based on sufficient facts or data (Rule 702(a)(1)), the product of reliable principles and methods (Rule 702(a)(2)), and the result of the witness reliably applying the principles and methods to the facts of the case (Rule 702(a)(3)). That said, there are circumstances where the proponent is not required to make these showings. Rule 702(a1)(2) permits a witness to give expert testimony about whether a person was impaired, and by what category of impairing substance, “notwithstanding any other provision of law” when the witness holds a current certification as a Drug Recognition Expert (DRE). In a case of first impression, the Court of Appeals held that the proponent of expert testimony by a witness properly certified as a DRE must nonetheless meet the showing required by Rule 702(a)(3) that the testimony is the result of the witness reliably applying the principles and methods to the facts of the case. Read on for more detail.

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A New Way to Authenticate Video? State v. Windseth and the Business Records Exception

Special thanks to Sloan Godbey, Summer Law Fellow at UNC SOG, for their significant contributions to this post.

In March of last year, I did a thorough review of North Carolina cases addressing the authentication of surveillance video. I created a chart to understand what ingredients are adequate (and inadequate) to lay a foundation. That chart can be found here, and the related blog here.

However, a case came down in March of this year that raises significant questions about how video is authenticated, or at least introduces a new potential avenue for authenticating video. I’m afraid my cherished chart may soon be of limited utility. But such is the way the law develops!

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Authentication of Digital Communications Chart

A common evidence question that arises is how to properly authenticate digital communications. We have written on the topic in several blogs: How Can a Party Show Authorship of a Social Media Post or Other Electronic Communication?, Authenticating Photographs Obtained from Social Media Platforms, Business Records: Posts, Chats, and Texts, New Guidance on Authenticating Social Media, Admissibility of Electronic Writings: Emails, Text Messages, and Social Networking Posts, and more.

Last year, I created a chart to highlight the ingredients of authentication our appellate courts found to be adequate or inadequate as a foundation for surveillance video (also see the accompanying blog, Surveillance Video- When It Comes In and When It Doesn’t). I’ve received positive feedback on the chart and practitioners have asked for more evidence content in this format. For a second installment, I chose digital communications.

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Surveillance Video- When It Comes In and When It Doesn’t

Video evidence authentication has received a fair amount of treatment on this blog. The topic remains an area of practical significance given the prevalence of video evidence in criminal trials and how common it is for the prosecution’s case to hinge on the admission of video. We are increasingly a video-focused society. Between home security cam, doorbell cam, body-worn cam, in-car cam, pole cam, and even parking lot cam, juries increasingly expect to see video, whether the incident in question occurred outside a home, near a business, or on the roadside.

In this post, I will focus on surveillance video.

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When Can the State Use Testimony from the Probable Cause Hearing at Trial?

My colleague, Phil Dixon, blogged about the Court of Appeals’ decision in State v. Joyner, 284 N.C. App. 681 (2022), here. In Joyner, the court ruled that the State did not run afoul of the Confrontation Clause when it introduced the victim’s testimony from a civil 50C hearing at the defendant’s criminal trial. Last year, the court decided State v. Smith, 287 N.C. App. 614 (2023) (unpublished), a case that provides an interesting counterpoint to Joyner. In Smith, the State recorded the victim’s testimony from the probable cause hearing in district court and moved to admit the testimony at trial in superior court after the victim became unavailable. The trial court admitted the testimony, but the Court of Appeals reversed. It ruled that the opportunity to cross-examine the victim at the probable cause hearing was not “adequate” to comport with constitutional requirements, vacated the convictions for first-degree kidnapping and human trafficking, and ordered a new trial.

Although the opinion is unpublished, the State did not seek further review, and the Smith decision has important implications for practitioners. This post examines those issues and offers advice for defenders when the State attempts to introduce recorded testimony from a probable cause hearing at trial.

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Authenticating Photographs Obtained from Social Media Platforms

In my last post, I wrote about how a party might authenticate a Facebook direct message or other text-based electronic communication. That post focused on how the proponent of the evidence might establish who wrote the message, i.e., authorship. But what if a party wants to introduce a photograph that was posted on a social media platform? The concept of authorship doesn’t really apply, and in the age of Photoshop and AI-generated images, courts may have serious concerns about the accuracy of online images.

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Failure to Appear at Civil No-Contact Hearing Was a Prior Opportunity for Cross-Examination and Constituted an Implied Waiver of Confrontation Rights at Subsequent Criminal Trial

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment generally guarantees a criminal defendant the right to confront and cross-examine his accusers in person. If a witness was available for an earlier trial or other proceeding and the defendant had an opportunity and motive to cross-examine the witness there, the witness testimony from the earlier proceeding may be admitted at a later criminal trial without offending the Confrontation Clause if the witness is unavailable at the time of trial. We have known for some time that this “prior opportunity for cross-examination” can be met at various stages of a criminal proceeding. See State v. Rollins, 226 N.C. App. 129 (2013) (testimony from plea hearing provided prior opportunity for cross); State v. Ross, 216 N.C. App. 337 (2011) (same for testimony at probable cause hearing); State v. Ramirez, (2003) (same for testimony at bond hearing, although the case was decided under hearsay rules and not expressly as a confrontation issue); State v. Chandler, 324 N.C. 172 (1989) (same for testimony from a prior trial); State v. Giles, 83 N.C. App. 487 (1986) (same for testimony from a juvenile transfer hearing). In all those cases, though, the defendant was present at the earlier proceeding, was represented by counsel, and the earlier proceedings could naturally be viewed as a part of the underlying criminal case. In State v. Joyner, 2022-NCCOA-525, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2022), the Court of Appeals expands the concept of prior opportunity to cross to a civil hearing where the defendant did not attend the hearing and was not entitled to counsel. Read on for the details.

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New Video Tech, Same Old Rules

My colleagues and predecessors here at the School of Government have written about video evidence many times over the years, summarizing the basic rules and significant cases in posts available here, here, here, here, and here.

Recently, though, I’ve been getting questions about a relatively new but increasingly common type of video evidence: high-tech, app-controlled, and remotely stored videos taken by automated devices ranging from doorbell cameras to wifi-enabled, cloud-connected, teddy bear spy cams. Do the old rules still work the same way for these new video tools? Is it substantive or illustrative evidence? If it’s substantive, how is it authenticated? Is a lay witness qualified to testify about how these cameras work? Does the proponent need the original video? Come to think of it, what is the “original” of a video that exists only as bits of data floating somewhere in the cloud…?

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The Rules When There Are No Rules

In this blog post from 2012, Professor Jessica Smith summarized Rules of Evidence 101 and 1101, which together dictate that the rules of evidence apply to “all actions and proceedings in the courts of this State,” except for proceedings that are specifically excluded by the rules or another statute. Pursuant to these two rules and the case law interpreting them, proceedings at which the rules of evidence (except for rules of privilege) do not apply include: applications for warrants; grand jury proceedings; first appearances; pretrial release hearings; probable cause hearings; hearings on motions to suppress; witness voir dire; sentencing hearings; probation revocation hearings; and more.

That’s quite a list. If the rules of evidence do not apply to any of these proceedings, are there any limits at all on the evidence that may be offered? Could an unsworn and mentally incompetent witness with no personal knowledge offer irrelevant and prejudicial triple-hearsay testimony about a prior conviction more than 10 years old, offered solely for the purpose of showing the defendant’s bad character and the likelihood that he acted in conformity therewith?

Surely not. But if there are no rules of evidence, why not? The short answer to nearly any question about the admissibility of evidence under Rule 1101(b) is “it’s in the judge’s discretion,” but what guides that discretion, and what are its limits?

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