Third Update: The use of initials appears to be a floor below which a criminal pleading may not fall. In In re M.S., the court of appeals held that a juvenile petition that identified a sex offense victim only as "a child" was inadequate. Second Update: The Court of Appeals has approved the use of initials in State v. McKoy, available here. Update: I have learned of at least one North Carolina trial court order addressing this issue, and finding, in the circumstance of the particular case at hand, that it was not improper to identify the victim by initials. The order is here: Order re Using Initials in Charging Documents Original Post: Magistrates and prosecutors sometimes want to use initials, rather than full names, to identify individuals other than the defendant in charging documents. For example, a magistrate preparing an arrest warrant for a sexual assault might want to identify the victim only by her initials, in order to preserve her privacy. Or, when a law enforcement officer has used an informant to purchase drugs from a defendant, the officer might ask the magistrate to identify the informant only by his initials, in order to protect him from retaliation and to preserve his usefulness as an informant. But is the use of initials proper? The starting point in the analysis is G.S. 15A-924(a)(5), which requires pleadings to contain a factual statement that summarizes the charged offense with "sufficient precision clearly to apprise the defendant . . . of the conduct [...]
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