Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (Dec. 31, 2020)

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on December 31, 2020. The summaries were prepared by Shea Denning, Jamie Markham, Chris Tyner, Gabrielle Supak, and Jonathan Holbrook. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present. The trial court erred by denying the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained pursuant to a warrantless search of his residence as part of his post-release supervision. State v. McCants, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Dec. 31, 2020). In this Guilford County case, the defendant was on post-release supervision (PRS) for a previous felony. The Department of Public Safety deemed him to be a “high-risk offender” and a “validated gang member,” and thus included him in a May 2017 search operation conducted jointly with other state and federal law enforcement agencies. During that operation, officers searched the defendant’s residence and found a firearm in his bedside table, which led to a new criminal charge for possession of firearm by a felon. In response to the new criminal charge the defendant moved to suppress the handgun as the fruit of an illegal warrantless search, arguing that a warrantless search of his residence was unconstitutional under the federal and state constitutions in that it was not authorized by statute or as a matter of consent. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, but the Court of Appeals reversed, agreeing that a warrantless search of the [...]