Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
State v. Miller, 371 N.C. 266, 814 S.E.2d 81 (Jun. 8, 2018)
On appeal from a unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals, ___ N.C. App. ___, 795 S.E.2d 374 (2016), the court reversed, holding that the defendant’s Fourth Amendment claims regarding the traffic stop are not reviewable on direct appeal, even for plain error, because the defendant waived them by not moving to suppress the evidence discovered during the stop before or at trial. The defendant did not move to suppress the evidence before or at trial, but instead argued for the first time on appeal that the seizure of the evidence—here cocaine--resulted from various Fourth Amendment violations. Deciding this issue of first impression, the court held that plain error review is not available when a defendant has not moved to suppress at the trial level. It noted that when a defendant does not move to suppress in the trial court, the evidentiary record pertaining to the suppression issue is not fully developed, and may not be developed at all. Without a fully developed record, and appellate court lacks the information necessary to assess the merits of a defendant’s plain error arguments. Here, for example, the Court of Appeals reviewed the officer’s body camera footage and determined that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to extend the stop. However, the officer never testified at a suppression hearing, and thus never gave testimony regarding whether he had reasonable suspicion, including testimony about facts that were not captured on the camera footage. The court reversed and remanded to the Court of Appeals for consideration of the defendant’s claim that counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to move to suppress the evidence in question.