Case Summaries – North Carolina Court of Appeals (June 16, 2020)

This post summarizes published criminal cases issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on June 16, 2020. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free, searchable database of case annotations from 2008 to today. Thanks to Chris Tyner for preparing the majority of these summaries. (1) Error, but no prejudice, in admitting field test results on suspected cocaine in assault and attempted robbery case; (2) Defendant waived variance issue with habitual felon indictment. State v. Cobb, __ N.C. App. __, __ S.E.2d __ (June 16, 2020) An officer initiated a voluntary encounter with the defendant sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car. The officer detected a marijuana odor, and the defendant admitted he was smoking a blunt and handed it to the officer. Once backup arrived, the officer asked the defendant to step out of the car and searched him incident to arrest. Upon discovering a “wad of money” totaling thousands of dollars and asking defendant about it, the defendant fled on foot. During the resulting pursuit and takedown, the defendant attempted to take the officer’s firearm and also placed a bag of white powder in his mouth. Believing the defendant was destroying evidence and putting himself at risk, the officer forcibly removed the bag from the defendant’s mouth. The defendant resisted and bit the officer’s finger hard enough to break the skin. The powder later field-tested positive for cocaine. At the defendant’s subsequent trial for assault inflicting serious injury on an [...]