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 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 this violation of a DVPO case, screenshots of Facebook posts were authenticated by sufficient circumstantial evidence showing that the screenshots in fact depicted Facebook posts and that the comments in the post were made by the defendant such that the screenshots were properly admitted into evidence. Shortly before the defendant was scheduled to be released from prison, the victim renewed a DVPO prohibiting him from contacting her. Soon after his release, the victim began receiving phone calls from a blocked number and Facebook comments from her daughter’s account that the victim believed were written by the defendant rather than her daughter. These communications were the basis for the DVPO violation at issue.
The court first reviewed precedent to determine that the question of whether evidence has been sufficiently authenticated is subject to de novo review on appeal. The court then held that when screenshots of social media comments are used as they were here – to show both the fact of the communication and its purported author, the screenshots must be authenticated both as photographs and written statements. The victim’s testimony that she took the screenshots of her Facebook account was sufficient to authenticate the images as photographs. The victim’s testimony of receiving letters from the defendant while he was in prison and distinctive phone calls from a blocked number after his release, together with evidence of the defendant’s access to the daughter’s Facebook account was sufficient to authenticate the comments as written statements potentially made by the defendant such that admission of the screenshots into evidence was proper.
Judges Bryant and Berger concurred in result only, without separate opinions.
In this voluntary manslaughter case, where the defendant’s pit bull attacked and killed the victim, the trial court did not err by admitting as evidence screenshots from the defendant’s webpage over the defendant’s claim that the evidence was not properly authenticated. The State presented substantial evidence that the website was actually maintained by the defendant. Specifically, a detective found the MySpace page in question with the name “Flexugod/7.” The page contained photos of the defendant and of the dog allegedly involved in the incident. Additionally, the detective found a certificate awarded to the defendant on which the defendant is referred to as “Flex.” He also found a link to a YouTube video depicting the defendant’s dog. This evidence was sufficient to support a prima facie showing that the MySpace page was the defendant’s webpage. It noted: “While tracking the webpage directly to defendant through an appropriate electronic footprint or link would provide some technological evidence, such evidence is not required in a case such as this, where strong circumstantial evidence exists that this webpage and its unique content belong to defendant.”