Court of Appeals Finds Extension of Traffic Stop Unsupported by Reasonable...
Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Bedient, a significant post-Rodriguez opinion on traffic stops. The court ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to extend a stop by a few...
View ArticlePost-Rodriguez North Carolina Appellate Cases at a Glance
By now, most court actors are familiar with the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Rodriguez v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (April 21, 2015) (discussed in a prior post) that a...
View ArticleAn Officer’s Reasonable Mistake of Law and Recent Court of Appeals Ruling
The United States Supreme Court in 2014 ruled in Heien v. North Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 530 (affirming State v. Heien, 366 N.C. 271 (2012)), that an officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of law in...
View ArticleRecent North Carolina Case on Lack of Reasonable Suspicion to Make Vehicle Stop
Although reasonable suspicion requires less evidence than probable cause and often is not a difficult standard for an officer to satisfy to make an investigative stop, the standard requires an...
View ArticleMay Teachers Search Students’ Cell Phones?
I have a “friend” whose teenage son was caught using his cell phone in class. The teacher saw him using it and took the phone. She looked at the phone when she picked it up and saw displayed on its...
View ArticleNC Supreme Court Evaluates Traffic Stop for Fishtailing in Snow
State v. Johnson, __ N.C. __ (August 18, 2017) opens like a novel: Defendant was stopped at a red light on a snowy evening. When the light turned green, defendant’s truck abruptly accelerated, turned...
View ArticleMyers McNeill and What Happens When Reasonable Suspicion Dissipates
Last week, the court of appeals ruled that during a traffic stop, an officer may require a driver to produce his or her license and may run computer checks on it — even when the reasonable suspicion...
View ArticleShooting an Officer the Bird
Editor’s note: The opinion analyzed in this post was withdrawn shortly after publication and replaced with this opinion reaching the same outcome. Last week, in State v. Ellis, __ N.C. App. __, __...
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Stay-At-Home Orders, Charges, and Stops
The Governor ordered individuals in North Carolina to stay at home and non-essential business operations to cease beginning at 5 p.m. Monday, March 30, 2020. The order, Executive Order No. 121, remains...
View ArticleOpen Carry and Reasonable Suspicion
A decade ago, I wrote a post about the circumstances under which police may stop a person who is carrying a gun openly. A lot has changed since then. The Supreme Court has strengthened the Second...
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