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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Reversing the Court of Appeals, the court held that Evidence Rule 702(a1) does not require the trial court to explicitly recognize a law enforcement officer as an expert witness pursuant to Rule 702(a) before he can testify to the results of a HGN test. Rather, the court noted, prior case law establishes that an implicit finding will suffice. Reviewing the record before it, the court found that here, by overruling the defendant’s objection to the witness’s testimony, the trial court implicitly found that the officer was qualified to testify as an expert. The court noted however that its ability to review the trial court’s decision “would have benefited from the inclusion of additional facts supporting its determination” that the officer was qualified to testify as an expert.
In this Wake County case, two defendants were indicted for murdering the victim and their cases were consolidated for trial. After both defendants were convicted of first-degree murder, they appealed, arguing error in admitting certain evidence, imposing special conditions restricting defendant’s ability to participate in training or educational classes, and denying a motion to sever. The Court of Appeals found no error with the evidence or denying motion to sever, but reversed the portion of the judgments imposing special conditions on the two defendants.
In August of 2019, the victim was shot as he entered his home after being dropped off by a friend. The victim was followed by the two defendants, who were in separate vehicles but coordinating on a facetime call before shooting the victim. They fled in their separate vehicles after the shooting.
The Court of Appeals began with objections to five surveillance videotapes that defendants argued were not properly authenticated. The court rejected the challenge for all five tapes, noting each tape was introduced by witness testimony, and “[e]ach witness testified to the reliability of the surveillance videotaping systems and that the videos that were at trial accurately depicted the original videos recorded by the surveillance systems.” Slip Op. at 3.
The court next considered testimony from an officer regarding data from cell towers showing the movement of defendants on the night of the murder, as defendants argued the officer was not tendered as an expert. Here, no published North Carolina opinion had determined whether this was expert or lay opinion testimony. The court looked to the unpublished State v. Joyner, 280 N.C. App. 561 (2021), and the Iowa Supreme Court opinion State v. Boothby, 951 N.W.2d 859 (Iowa 2020). After exploring the applicable caselaw, the court “expressly adopt[ed] the analysis and holding in Boothby” when concluding that most of the officer’s testimony was lay testimony and admissible. Slip Op. at 5. The remaining testimony, while constituting expert testimony, was not prejudicial due to the video evidence previously discussed.
Reaching the special sentencing conditions, the State conceded the trial court’s sentencing conditions barring each defendant from receiving educational or vocational training for the first twenty-two years of imprisonment was error. The court agreed, explaining “[n]owhere in our General Statutes is there language providing a trial judge the authority to restrict a defendant’s rights to vocational training or educational classes while incarcerated.” Id. at 6.
The court also dispensed with an ineffective assistance of counsel claim as the defendant in question could not demonstrate unprofessional conduct. And finally, the court noted the motion to sever was properly denied, because although the two defendants presented antagonistic defenses, their respective positions did not represent a conflict that would prevent a fair trial.
In this Wake County case, defendant appealed his convictions for first-degree murder, concealing death by disturbing or dismembering human remains, and possession of a firearm by a felon, arguing plain error by allowing the State’s forensic anthropologist to give an opinion beyond her expertise, and error in not intervening ex mero motu during closing argument. The Court of Appeals found no reversible error.
In June of 2020, the mother of defendant’s girlfriend became concerned because she had not seen her daughter for several days. Law enforcement attempted to find defendant, as he had fled to Virginia. After defendant was located, he provided a description of where he left the body; the girlfriend’s dismembered body was later found in Franklin, Virginia, along with a gun. At trial, defendant claimed he found his girlfriend’s body in the bathtub from an apparent suicide, and after this traumatic event he convinced himself that he had to hide her body. The State called a forensic anthropology expert to testify about the gunshot wound that killed the girlfriend. This expert opined that it would be highly unlikely that the projectile that killed her would have caused no damage to the fiberglass tub. Defendant did not object to this testimony at trial. During closing argument, the prosecutor mentioned that defendant did not plead guilty as a commentary about the possible distractions being offered by defense counsel.
Taking up the expert testimony, the Court of Appeals noted that here the trial court failed to exercise its gatekeeping function under Rule of Evidence 702(a), as it did not require the expert to “testify to the rationale supporting her opinion regarding the potential for defects to the fiberglass bathtub caused by a high-velocity gunshot injury,” but the error did not represent plain error. Slip Op. at 13-14. The court noted that the expert was “absolutely qualified to testify about the trajectory, velocity, and impact force of a bullet upon exit,” and she explained the analyses she performed on the girlfriend’s skull and factors related to that opinion, showing that her testimony was not baseless speculation. Id. at 14.
Dispensing with the closing argument issue, the court noted the prosecutor’s statement came after a lengthy discussion about “red herrings” to be offered by defense counsel. Id. at 16. The court explained the prosecutor was not targeting defendant’s failure to plead guilty, but instead the statement “was to illuminate to the jury another distraction tactic the prosecutor anticipated defense counsel utilizing in closing.” Id. at 17.
Judge Murphy concurred but wrote separately, arguing that the trial court did not err by allowing the expert testimony.
In this drug case, the trial court did not commit plain error by admitting the expert opinion of a forensic chemist. On appeal, the defendant argued that the expert’s testimony failed to demonstrate that the methods she used were reliable under the Rule 702. Specifically, he argued that the particular testing process used by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Crime Lab to identify cocaine creates an unacceptable risk of a false positive and that this risk, standing alone, renders expert testimony based on the results of this testing process inherently unreliable under Rule 702(a). The court declined to consider this argument, concluding that it “goes beyond the record.” The defendant did not object to the expert's opinion at trial. The court concluded that because the defendant failed to object at trial, the issue was unpreserved. However, because an unpreserved challenge to the performance of a trial court's gatekeeping function under Rule 702 in a criminal trial is subject to plain error review, the court reviewed the case under that standard. The court noted that its “jurisprudence wisely warns against imposing a Daubert ruling on a cold record” and that as a result the court limits its plain error review “of the trial court’s gatekeeping function to the evidence and material included in the record on appeal and the verbatim transcript of proceedings.” (quotation omitted). Here, the defendant’s false positive argument “is based on documents, data, and theories that were neither presented to the trial court nor included in the record on appeal.” The court determined that its plain error review of the defendant’s Rule 702 argument “is limited solely to the record on appeal and the question of whether or not an adequate foundation was laid before [the] expert opinion was admitted.” Here, an adequate foundation was laid. The witness, tendered as an expert in forensic chemistry, testified that she had a degree in Chemistry and over 20 years of experience in drug identification. She also testified about the type of testing conducted on the substance in question and the methods used by the Crime Lab to identify controlled substances. The witness testified that she tested the seized substance, that she used a properly functioning GCMS, and that the results from that test provided the basis for her opinion. Furthermore, her testimony indicates that she complied with Lab procedures and the methods she used were “standard practice in forensic chemistry.” This testimony was sufficient to establish a foundation for admitting her expert opinion under Rule 702.
The court also rejected the defendant’s argument that the trial court erred “by failing to conduct any further inquiry” when the witness’s testimony showed that she used scientifically unreliable methods, stating: “While in some instances a trial court’s gatekeeping obligation may require the judge to question an expert witness to ensure his or her testimony is reliable, sua sponte judicial inquiry is not a prerequisite to the admission of expert opinion testimony.”