We are putting the final touches on the new edition of the North Carolina Sentencing Handbook – publication date forthcoming! As part of revising and updating the DWI Sentencing portion, three updates stood out to me as warranting some more discussion. First, the legislature has expanded delegated authority for probation officers to include probationers sentenced for impaired driving under G.S. 20-179. Second, the Court of Appeals further clarified the presumption for unsupervised probation and requirements for transferring a probationer from supervised to unsupervised probation. Third, a new mitigating factor was added for voluntary pretrial installation of an ignition interlock device. Read on for more details.
North Carolina Court of Appeals
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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (May 21, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 21, 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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (May 7, 2025)
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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (April 16, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on April 16, 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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (April 2, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on April 2, 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.
State v. Watlington: Court Clarifies Unit of Prosecution for Hit and Run
Author’s Note: This post has been modified from its original based on the reissuance of the opinion on April 16, 2025.
Earlier last month, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Watlington, COA23-1106, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2025). Among other issues, in its decision the Court addressed an open question: what is the unit of prosecution for a hit and run? May the defendant be charged once for leaving the scene of a crash that causes injury, or instead may a separate charge be issued for each person injured? (Shea Denning wrote about that issue and the framework for analysis in 2014, noting then that the question had not been directly addressed by our appellate courts). We now have an answer: the unit of prosecution is the number of crashes from which the defendant fled, not the number of people injured. Read on for further details.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (March 19, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on March 19, 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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (March 5, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on March 5, 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.

Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Feb. 19, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on February 19, 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.