Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
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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.
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In this Robeson County case, defendant appealed his convictions for assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury without intent to kill and injury to personal property, arguing the admission of expert testimony by a lay witness represented plain error. The Court of Appeals majority agreed, vacating and remanding for a new trial.
Defendant and the alleged victim, his neighbor, had a contentious relationship due to the victim riding his 4-wheeler on defendant’s property without permission and throwing beer cans in defendant’s yard. In January of 2019, defendant was driving home and struck the victim on his 4-wheeler; testimony differed on whether the victim was riding his 4-wheeler on his own property and whether defendant intentionally hit the victim. At trial, the law enforcement officer who responded to the accident testified about the scene, and then was asked by the State if he had formed an opinion about whether the act of hitting the victim was intentional. The officer testified that it was his opinion that the act was intentional. Defendant was subsequently convicted and appealed.
The Court of Appeals explained that defense counsel failed to object to the officer’s opinion testimony at trial, meaning the review was for plain error. The court then noted that an officer who does not witness an accident is “permitted to testify about physical facts observed at the scene, including the condition of the vehicles after the accident and their positioning,” but is not qualified to offer conclusions from those facts. Slip Op. at 4. In this case, the State did not present the officer as an expert witness in accident reconstruction, and it was error to allow him to testify about his opinion on the intentional nature of the accident. The court then found that allowing the officer to testify about the central dispute in the case “had a probable impact on the jury” and represented plain error, justifying a new trial. Id. at 7.
Judge Stading dissented, and would not have found plain error, exploring the other arguments made by defendant and recommending a remand to remedy habitual felon and restitution issues.
In this felony death by vehicle case, the trial court committed reversible error by admitting lay opinion testimony identifying the defendant as the driver of the vehicle, where the expert accident reconstruction analyst was unable to form an expert opinion based upon the same information available to the lay witness. The defendant and Danielle Mitchell were in a car when it ran off the road and wrecked, killing Mitchell. The defendant was charged with felony death by vehicle and the primary issue at trial was whether the defendant was driving. At trial, Trooper Fox testified that he believed the defendant was driving because “the seating position was pushed back to a position where I did not feel that Ms. Mitchell would be able to operate that vehicle or reach the pedals.” Fox, however, acknowledged that he was not an expert in accident reconstruction. Trooper Souther, the accident reconstruction expert who analyzed the accident, could not reach a conclusive expert opinion about who was driving. The defendant was convicted and he appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by allowing Fox, who was not an expert, to testify to his opinion that the defendant was driving. The court noted that accident reconstruction analysis requires expert testimony and it found no instance of lay accident reconstruction analysis testimony in the case law. Here, Fox based his lay opinion on the very same information used by Souther but without the benefit of expert analysis. The court concluded: “the facts about the accident and measurements available were simply not sufficient to support an expert opinion — as Trooper Souther testified — and lay opinion testimony on this issue is not admissible under Rule 701.” Having found error, the court went on to conclude that it was prejudicial, requiring a new trial.
It was error to allow officers, who were not proffered as experts in accident reconstruction and who did not witness the car accident in question, to testify to their opinions that the defendant was at fault based on their examination of the accident scene. The court stated: “Accident reconstruction opinion testimony may only be admitted by experts, who have proven to the trial court's satisfaction that they have a superior ability to form conclusions based upon the evidence gathered from the scene of the accident than does the jury.” However, the court went on to find that the error did not rise to the level of plain error.