Case Summaries – N.C. Court of Appeals (Oct. 18, 2022)

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on October 18, 2022. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present. Officer shining a flashlight through defendant’s windows during a traffic stop was not a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. State v. Hunter, 2022-NCCOA-683, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Oct. 18, 2022). In this Gaston County case, defendant appealed the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress after entering a no contest plea to possession of a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia, and failure to stop at a stop sign. The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment. In October of 2020, police officers observed a car roll through a stop sign and pulled over the vehicle. When officers approached, defendant was behind the wheel; one officer took defendant’s license and information to perform a warrant check, while the other officer stayed with defendant and shined a flashlight through the windows to observe the vehicle. After shining the light around the vehicle, the officer noticed a plastic baggie next to the driver’s door, and defendant was detained while the officers retrieved and tested the baggie. The baggie tested positive for crack-cocaine. On appeal, defendant argued that the stop was inappropriately pretextual, and that the officer shining a flashlight lacked probable cause to search his vehicle. The Court of Appeals disagreed, explaining that “[o]fficers who lawfully approach a car and [...]