North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Probationer Samantha Green, for the first time while on probation, tested positive for cocaine, THC, and opiates; a search of Green’s car revealed oxycodone pills, and Green revealed a bag of oxycodone pills on her person. The subsequent search of ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

In defendant’s trial for uttering a check made out to his ex-wife, there were 18 unrecorded bench conferences. Defendant did not ask that the bench conferences be recorded or that the trial court reconstruct such conferences for the record. The ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Although the entity capable of owning the stolen school property in question was the Graham County Board of Education, the felony larceny indictment against defendant sufficiently alleged an entity capable of owning property when it alleged that defendant stole property ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

In a colloquy with the trial court, defendant consented to his counsel’s strategy of admitting that defendant had fired the shot that resulted in the victim’s death and t0 arguing that defendant was guilty of lesser-included offenses. Because defendant consented ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

This drug trafficking case involved several co-defendants and different law enforcement agencies, and it led to two hung-jury mistrials on the charges against defendant. Although more than five years elapsed between defendant’s arrest and his convictions, he has not shown ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Even if it was error to admit a detective’s non-responsive testimony that “defendant is the person that robbed the Phoenix Travel Mart,” it was not plain error given the detailed description of the robber’s clothing, defendant’s matching clothing, the surveillance ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

On an issue of first impression for North Carolina appellate courts, the court finds that, given the minimal (five- to ten-minute) delay occasioned by a drug dog sniff of a Federal Express package addressed to defendant, for the purposes of ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Defendant was in the passenger seat of a vehicle, which was stationary with its lights on and its engine running in an apartment complex parking lot lane when police officers approached the vehicle on foot. The officers did nothing to ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Where the defendant-attorney knew his clients lacked the capacity to understand either their representation agreement with him or their settlement agreement with the Town of Red Springs, it was dishonest for defendant to enter into the representation agreement, it was ...

Tagged with: Attorneys

Although an order compelling arbitration is not usually immediately appealable, the trial court made its order immediately appealable – partially – by also dismissing the complaint with prejudice in violation of the North Carolina Revised Uniform Arbitration Act.  We reverse ...

Tagged with: Arbitration