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 Jackson County case, defendant appealed his convictions for felony obtaining property by false pretenses and felony identity fraud, arguing error in (1) admitting ATM videos of defendant that were not properly authenticated, and (2) allowing lay-opinion testimony from an officer identifying defendant in the videos. The Court of Appeals found no error.
When defendant’s mother went missing in January 2022, the sheriff’s office began investigating her disappearance, and they eventually obtained records from Wells Fargo containing videos from ATMs where withdrawals were made from her account. These videos showed defendant making withdrawals, and later when defendant was apprehended, his mother’s credit and debit cards were found on his person. At trial, the State showed stills from these videos, and an officer testified as to the videos and identifying defendant as the person appearing in them. Defense counsel did not object at trial to the admission of these videos or the identification of defendant.
Beginning with (1), the Court of Appeals explained that Rule of Evidence 901 governed admitting the videos, and here defendant only challenged the admission of the still images from these videos. Although this was a novel question, the court rejected the challenge, noting the State laid adequate foundation for the video extractions and “that the trial court properly authenticated the ATM videos as admissible evidence because their derivative photos were ‘nothing more than a series of static images appearing at a given frame rate.’” Slip Op. at 8 (quoting United States v. Clotaire, 963 F.3d 1288 (2020)).
In (2), the court noted that Rule of Evidence 701 governed the lay testimony, and under State v. Collins, 216 N.C. App. 249 (2011), the officer needed some superior level of familiarity with the defendant to justify his testimony identifying the defendant or the testimony would be invading the province of the jury. The court concluded that the evidence here supported the familiarity required by Collins, as the officer “had interacted with Defendant on multiple occasions as part of that preexisting investigation” into his mother’s disappearance. Slip Op. at 10.
In this Scotland County case, defendant appealed his conviction for first-degree murder, arguing error in admitting (1) photos of Facebook messages allegedly sent by defendant, and (2) a CAD report of a 911 call. The Court of Appeals found no error.
In December of 2020, defendant and several family and friends were gathered at home, when a dispute broke out between defendant and his older brother. The dispute culminated with defendant pulling a gun and shooting his older brother on the porch. Family members called 911 and the sheriff’s office responded, finding the victim dead on the ground. At trial, the victim’s daughter testified that she communicated with defendant through Facebook Messenger because defendant did not have a phone with service, and she believed the victim also communicated with defendant that way. The State offered photographs showing a Facebook Messenger conversation between the victim and defendant, and the trial court overruled defense counsel’s objections to the authentication of the exhibit. The State also offered a one-page CAD report from a 911 call received two hours after the incident. The trial court allowed this exhibit solely for the purpose of establishing the call occurred, but did not allow discussion of the conversation.
Beginning with (1), the Court of Appeals noted that “the burden to authenticate under Rule 901 is not high—only a prima facie showing is required” and looked to the circumstantial evidence for support that the messages were actually sent to and from defendant. Slip Op. at 9 (quoting State v. Ford, 245 N.C. App. 510, 519 (2016)). The court found sufficient evidence in the testimony of the victim’s daughter, as “the use of Facebook Messenger was consistent with Defendant’s behavior,” and from a deputy who testified how he retrieved the messages from the victim’s phone and read several messages that “contained references and information corroborating their authenticity.” Id. at 11. This led the court to conclude it was not error to admit the Facebook Messenger comments.
Moving to (2), defendant argued “the trial court’s decisions to admit the CAD report showing a 911 call had been received approximately two hours after the incident and to exclude the content of the call were inconsistent.” Id. at 12. The court disagreed, explaining that defendant objected the CAD report was not relevant, and the standard for relevancy is “relatively lax.” Id. at 13 (quoting State v. McElrath, 322 N.C. 1, 13 (1988)). Here, the CAD report made the fact that an incident occurred in the early morning more likely, and the trial court concluded the actual substance of the call was unfairly prejudicial under Rule 403. The court explained that “these rulings are consistent and show an effort by the trial court to provide jurors with explanatory information . . . while protecting Defendant from undue prejudice.” Id. at 14.
In an armed robbery case, the trial court did not err by admitting three photographs of the defendant and his tattoos, taken at the jail after his arrest. The photographs were properly authenticated where the officer who took them testified about the procedure used and that they fairly and accurately depicted the defendant’s tattoo as it appeared when he was in custody.
In this drug case where the defendant denied being the perpetrator and suggested that the drugs were sold by one of his sons, the State failed to properly authenticate two photographs used in photographic lineups as being of the defendant’s sons. An informant involved in the drug buy testified that he had purchased drugs from the people depicted in the photos on previous occasions but not on the occasion in question. The State then offered an officer to establish that the photos depicted the defendant’s sons. However, the officer testified that he wasn’t sure that the photos depicted the defendant’s sons. Given this lack of authentication, the court also held that the photos were irrelevant and should not have been admitted.
The trial court erred by allowing the State to introduce three photographs, which were part of a surveillance video, when the photographs were not properly authenticated. However, given the evidence of guilt, no plain error occurred.