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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Due process required that a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice recuse himself from the capital defendant’s post-conviction challenge where the justice had been the district attorney who gave his official approval to seek the death penalty in the case. The Court stated: “under the Due Process Clause there is an impermissible risk of actual bias when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendant’s case.” It went on to hold that the justice’s authorization to seek the death penalty against the defendant constituted significant, personal involvement in a critical trial decision. Finally, it determined that an unconstitutional failure to recuse constitutes structural error even if the judge in question did not cast a deciding vote; as such the error was not subject to harmless error review.
A violation of due process occurred when West Virginia Supreme Court justice Brent Benjamin denied a recusal motion. The Supreme Court of West Virginia reversed a trial court judgment which had entered a jury verdict of $50 million against A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc. Five justices heard the case, and the vote was 3 to 2. The basis for the recusal motion was that Justice Benjamin had received campaign contributions in an extraordinary amount from, and through the efforts of, Don Blankenship, Massey’s board chairman and principal officer. After the initial verdict in the case, but before the appeal, West Virginia held its 2004 judicial elections. Benjamin was running against an incumbent justice. In addition to contributing the $1,000 statutory maximum to Benjamin’s campaign committee, Blankenship donated almost $2.5 million to a political organization opposed to the incumbent and supporting Benjamin. Additionally, Blankenship spent just over $500,000 on independent expenditures—direct mailings and letters soliciting donations as well as television and newspaper advertisements supporting Benjamin. Blankenship’s $3 million in contributions were more than the total amount spent by all other Benjamin supporters and three times the amount spent by Benjamin’s own committee. Benjamin won, in a close election. In October 2005, before Massey filed its petition for appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court, the plaintiffs in the underlying action moved to disqualify now-Justice Benjamin based on the conflict caused by Blankenship’s campaign involvement. Justice Benjamin denied the motion. In November 2007, the West Virginia Supreme Court reversed the $50 million verdict against Massey. It did so again on rehearing, after another recusal motion was denied. The U.S. Supreme Court held that “Blankenship’s significant and disproportionate influence—coupled with the temporal relationship between the election and the pending case—offer a possible temptation to the average . . . judge to . . . lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true” and that “[o]n these extreme facts, the probability of actual bias rises to an unconstitutional level.”
In this Forsyth County case, defendant appealed the denial of his request for the trial court judge’s recusal due to the judge’s issuance of several tracking and cell site location orders. The Court of Appeals majority affirmed the denial of the request for recusal.
In 2019 and 2020, law enforcement obtained several orders to intercept cell phone calls and conversations between defendant and co-conspirators from a judicial review panel under G.S. 15A-291. After obtaining these orders, law enforcement sought three more orders allowing a GPS tracking device, a pen register and trap and trace device, and cell site location information and call detail records for two target phones relevant to defendant. These three orders were issued in December 2019 and January 2020 by the same judge who would later preside over the trial and form the basis of the request for recusal. After defendant was indicted for trafficking cocaine, he raised the issue of recusal with the trial court, pointing to G.S. 15-291(c). The trial court refused the request for recusal, as “the orders were authorized pursuant to sections 15A-262 and 15A-263 of Article 12, not pursuant to section 15A-291 of Article 16, and [the trial court judge] was not part of a judicial review panel as stated in the plain language of section 15A-291(c).” Slip Op. at 3. After defendant’s conviction, he appealed, arguing recusal was required.
The Court of Appeals first explained defendant’s arguments, noting the primary point that Article 16 of G.S. Chapter 15A, and G.S. 15-291 itself, both reference “electronic surveillance,” seemingly showing that the recusal requirement from the statute controls all requests for surveillance involving electronic means. The court rejected this conclusion, explaining “[t]he plain language of section 15A-291(c) only disqualifies judges who enter orders as part of a judicial review panel that authorize ‘any manner related to information gained pursuant to a lawful electronic surveillance order.’” Id. at 7. The court also noted that defendant failed to preserve a challenge to the validity of the orders, meaning its conclusion was solely on the recusal issue.
Judge Hampson concurred by separate opinion, expressing concern about the scope of the order issued by the judge permitting the collection of cell site location information under Article 12 of G.S. Chapter 15A.
Judge Arrowood dissented, and would have held that defendant adequately preserved the challenge to the validity of the orders issued by the judge, and that G.S. 15A-291(c) was applicable to the orders and required the judge’s recusal.
The defendant failed to demonstrate grounds for recusal. The defendant argued that recusal was warranted based on the trial judge’s comments at various hearings and on the fact that “the trial court was often dismissive of defense counsel’s efforts and made a number of rulings unfavorable to the Defendant.” The court cautioned the trial court with respect to the following statement made at trial: “The other thing I want to do is put on the record that I leave to the appellate courts whether or not any recommendation as to discipline should be made to any of the responses or conduct of the attorneys based upon the record in this case as to whether any of the Rules of Practice or Rules of Conduct have been violated.” The court concluded that although it was unclear what issue the trial court meant to address with this statement, “it is the trial court’s responsibility initially to pass on these concerns if the court has them, especially in view of the fact that the trial court is in a better position than a Court of the Appellate Division both to observe and control the trial proceedings. . . . It is not for the trial court to abdicate its role in managing the conduct of trial to an appellate court whose task is to review the cold record” (citation omitted).