Articles related to state v. osborne

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on December 15, 2020. Special thanks to Gabby Supak and Jamie Markham for assisting with this batch.

In August, the North Carolina Supreme Court weighed in on drug identification once again in State v. Osborne, ___ N.C. ___ (August 16, 2019). I wrote about the earlier Court of Appeals decision in the case, here. The new Osborne decision clarifies the application of drug identification rules as well as sufficiency of the evidence in this context.

Back in February, I blogged about State v. Bridges, ___ N.C. App. ___, 810 S.E.2d 365 (Feb. 6, 2018), and drug identification. In short, Bridges held that the defendant’s out-of-court admission to an officer that a substance was “meth” was sufficient to meet the State’s burden of proving the identity of the substance, at least where the defendant failed to object to the testimony. This decision arguably signified an expansion of the Nabors exception to the Ward rule that a chemical analysis is generally required to establish drug identity (subject to other exceptions covered in the post). For a more thorough review of the topic, see that previous post. The Court of Appeals recently decided another drug ID case, State v. Osborne, ___ N.C. App. ___ (October 2, 2018), adding a new wrinkle to the rules.