I recently wrote here about North Carolina’s notice and demand statutes and how they allow the State to obtain a constitutionally valid waiver of confrontation clause rights with respect to forensic reports and chain of custody evidence. The purpose of that post was to remind litigants of the existence of the statutes. But knowing about the statutes isn’t enough. Proper execution also is required. The recent court of appeals’ case, State v. Whittington, in which the State lost the benefit of the notice and demand statute because of improper execution, emphasizes that point. Whittington was a drug trafficking case. Officers seized pills and sent them to the SBI for analysis. Chemical analyst Brittany Dewell prepared a lab report identifying the pills as oxycodone, an opium derivative weighing 4.3 grams. The State later filed a "Request for Voluntary Discovery" notifying the defendant that it intended to introduce the following evidence in the trial of the above referenced criminal case: . . . Pursuant to G.S. § 90-95(g), any and all reports prepared by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation concerning the analysis of substances seized in the above captioned case. A copy of report(s) will be delivered upon request. There was no evidence that the defendant requested a copy of any reports. When the State sought to offer the lab report into evidence at trial without calling Dewell, the defendant objected on confrontation clause grounds. The trial court overruled the objection. The jury found the defendant guilty and he appealed. The issue [...]
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