A Post Eclipsing All My Other Ones

It’s solar eclipse day! Millions of North Carolinians will see today’s eclipse, with those in the far western end of the state experiencing totality. As is my custom when exceedingly rare things happen, I’ll mark the occasion by writing about some things that go beyond our usual subject matter. The truth is, in addition to being a sentencing nerd, I’m also a space nerd. (And a baseball nerd. And a Star Wars nerd. Oh man, I might just be a nerd.) One year I drove my kids back and forth to Cape Canaveral five times to see a shuttle launch that kept getting scrubbed for weather and technical difficulties. Totally worth it. Suffice it to say the eclipse has been kind of a big deal at our house. With that in mind, I did a little thinking about whether it could have any criminal law implications. Most ideas were a stretch. For example, could a break-in that happened during the eclipse be considered a burglary by virtue of happening at “night”? North Carolina doesn’t define the “nighttime” element of burglary statutorily, but instead adheres to the common law definition of “that time after sunset and before sunrise when it is so dark that a man’s face cannot be identified except by artificial light or moonlight.” State v. Brown, 221 N.C. App. 383 (2012). It’ll be that dark in the places falling in the path of totality, but I don’t think passing through the moon’s shadow qualifies as a sunset. A few [...]