Many readers will by now have heard the news: Chief Justice Martin is stepping down to become the Dean of the Regent School of Law, a Christian law school in Virginia. This post looks back at his criminal justice legacy, and forward at the future of the court. Chief Justice Martin’s legacy. The Chief Justice was just 35 years old when he joined the court in 1998. He was the youngest justice in history. He became Chief Justice in 2014. Chief Justice Martin wrote a number of important opinions over the years. The most historic may prove to be Cooper v. Berger, __ N.C. __, __ S.E.2d __, 2018 WL 6721278 (Dec. 21, 2018), holding that it does not violate separation of powers principles to require legislative confirmation of members of the Governor’s Cabinet. But he authored several significant criminal law opinions as well, among them the following: State v. Ortiz-Zape, 367 N.C. 1 (2013) (holding that it did not violate the Confrontation Clause for a forensic chemist to testify about the identity of a controlled substance when that chemist had not analyzed the substance herself, but had formed an “independent expert opinion” about its identity based on a “peer review” of testing done by another analyst) State v. Grice, 367 N.C. 763 (2015) (finding no Fourth Amendment violation where officers saw marijuana in plain view in the defendant’s front yard, then entered the yard without a warrant or consent to seize the marijuana, because “the unfenced portion of the property [...]
Faculty Coordinators
