This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the Supreme Court of North Carolina released on May 23, 2024. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present. Supreme Court holds that constitutional and statutory defects in indictments do not deprive…
In Part I of a series of posts on confidential informants, I revisited the landmark case of U.S. v. Roviaro, which began when a Chicago police officer hid in the trunk of an informant’s car to listen in on a heroin deal. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the officer in the trunk was no…
Are there limits on the court’s ability to continue the dispositional hearing in a delinquency case? The Court of Appeals recently identified one limit In re D.R.F., Jr., ____ N.C.App. _____ (May 7. 2024). The court held that a continuance for the sole purpose of placing the juvenile in secure custody as punishment before disposition…
The trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump for alleged falsification of business records is nearing its conclusion. The prosecution’s key witness, Michael Cohen, was on the stand for four days, describing what he and Trump discussed back in 2016 and 2017 when Cohen served as Trump’s lawyer. He outlined a plan to conceal a…
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 21, 2024. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present. Mistaken identification of paramedic as “emergency medical technician” did not represent fatal variance…
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the prohibition against the State commenting on a defendant’s failure to testify, or, in other words, a defendant’s silence at trial. Such comments are disallowed as they abridge a defendant’s federal and state constitutional rights not to be compelled to give self-incriminating evidence. This post addresses a…
This post summarizes published criminal and related decisions of interest from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2024. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit criminal cases can be found here. Illegal reentry statute was not enacted with a discriminatory purpose and does not violate Equal Protection U.S. v. Sanchez-Garcia, 98 F.4th 90 (April 4,…
With few exceptions, new law enforcement officers in North Carolina are required to complete a course called Basic Law Enforcement Training, or BLET. The curriculum for the course is established by the North Carolina Justice Academy, but the training is typically delivered at dozens of community colleges and through recruit academies run by some of…
It sounds like there’s a criminal trial of some kind going on in New York, but the big trial this week here in North Carolina was the retrial of self-proclaimed billionaire insurance magnate Greg Lindberg. Lindberg was once the state’s leading campaign donor. According to this AP story, a federal jury in the Western District…
Earlier this year, the Fourth Circuit decided United States v. Zelaya-Veliz, 94 F.4th 321 (4th Cir. 2024). Phil summarized it here when it came out, but we thought it merited its own post because of its extended discussion of how the Fourth Amendment applies to search warrants for social media account information. The court’s discussion…
