Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
About
This compendium includes significant criminal cases by the U.S. Supreme Court & N.C. appellate courts, Nov. 2008 – Present. Selected 4th Circuit cases also are included.
Jessica Smith prepared case summaries Nov. 2008-June 4, 2019; later summaries are prepared by other School staff.
Instructions
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In a murder case, the trial court did not err by denying the defendant’s request for an alibi instruction. The alibi defense rested on the defendant’s testimony that he did not injure the child victim and that he left the child unattended in a bathtub for an extended period of time while meeting with someone else. The court concluded that this testimony was merely incidental to the defendant’s denial that he harmed the child and did not warrant an alibi instruction. The testimony did not show that the defendant was somewhere which would have made it impossible for him to have been the perpetrator, given that the precise timing of the incident was not determined and the defendant had exclusive custody of the child before his death.