According to the News and Observer, the trial of Laurence Lovette begins today in Hillsborough. Lovette is charged with the first-degree murder of Eve Carson, who was, at the time of her death, the president of the student body at UNC - Chapel Hill. The case is non-capital, because Lovette was 17 at the time of the crime. Nonetheless, the paper reports, "jury selection is to begin . . . with prosecutors and defense lawyers interviewing potential jurors individually." I've been asked about the reference to individual questioning. Individual voir dire -- the questioning and selection of jurors one at a time -- is authorized by statute for capital cases. G.S. 15A-1214(j). May it properly be employed in a non-capital case? One might argue that the answer is no, based on the explicit statutory authorization of individual voir dire in capital cases together with the lack of any similar authorization regarding non-capital cases. The court of appeals seems to have endorsed this argument to some extent in State v. McKisson, 2003 WL 21649214 (N.C. Ct. App. July 15, 2003) (unpublished) (finding no abuse of discretion in trial court’s denial of defendant’s request for individual voir dire in a sexual assault case, and noting that “[t]he State points out that, under [G.S.] 15A-1214(j), individual juror voir dire is limited to capital cases, and the case law of this State has borne out that interpretation”). Cf. State v. Watson, 310 N.C. 384 (1984) (rejecting the defendant’s argument that the trial judge should have [...]
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