Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
About
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.
Instructions
Navigate using the table of contents to the left or by using the search box below. Use quotations for an exact phrase search. A search for multiple terms without quotations functions as an “or” search. Not sure where to start? The 5 minute video tutorial offers a guided tour of main features – Launch Tutorial (opens in new tab).
In this Martin County case, the Supreme Court reversed an unpublished Court of Appeals decision granting defendant a new trial for first-degree murder and finding that the robbery with a dangerous weapon charge should have been dismissed. The Court held that (1) the State admitted substantial...
In this Wake County case, defendant appealed his conviction for voluntary manslaughter, arguing (1) error or plain error in failing to provide a “not guilty” mandate for the voluntary manslaughter instruction, (2) error in ruling a hearsay statement was not an excited utterance and inadmissible...
The victim in this Davie County murder case was a “neighborhood runner,” running errands for people in general, and allegedly running drugs for the defendant. One afternoon, a friend of the victim was walking home and discovered the victim laying near railroad tracks. The victim told his...
In this child sexual assault case, the trial court did not err by admitting hearsay statements of the victim. At issue were several statements by the child victim. In all of them, the victim said some version of “daddy put his weiner in my coochie.”
First, the trial court admitted the...
In this child sexual assault case, the trial court did not err by admitting the victim’s statements to his mother under the excited utterance exception. The court rejected the defendant’s argument that a 10-day gap between the last incident of sexual abuse and the victim’s statements to his...
In this murder case where the defendant was charged with killing his wife, statements by the couple’s child to daycare workers made six days after her mother was killed were admissible as excited utterances. The child’s daycare teacher testified that the child asked her for “the mommy doll.”...
(1) In a child sexual assault case, the trial court did not err by declining to admit defense-proffered evidence offered under the hearsay exception for excited utterances. The evidence was the victim’s statement to a social worker made during “play therapy” sessions. Because the record...