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. State v. Brawley, ___ N.C. App. ___, 807 S.E.2d 159 (2018). Jeff wrote here about the court of appeals’ decision in State v. Brawley. That court rejected the State’s argument that the indictment’s reference to Belk’s Department Stores as “an entity capable of owning property,” was sufficient to compensate for its failure to specify the nature of the entity by stating that it was a corporation, partnership, or some other type of legal entity. The majority reasoned that it was “possible for there to be a [...]