Charlotte Criminal Lawyer Blog

Incarcerated Juveniles in North Carolina Prepare for Sentencing Changes

Published on: July 14, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

The Supreme Court recently held that it is cruel and unusual punishment to send a young murderer to prison for life if a judge has not first weighed whether he or she deserves a shorter prison sentence due to his or her youth and the specific nature of the crimes committed. The 5-4 decision struck down laws on the books in some 29 states – including North Carolina – that say life sentences without parole for juvenile murderers are acceptable.

Officials in North Carolina law enforcement say it will take some time for the state to assess the impact of the ruling. Post #2 criminal image 7.15.jpg Most experts in the state say that the number of state prisoners affected by the Supreme Court ruling is around 88.

North Carolina was among 29 states that required life sentences for youth found guilty of first-degree murder. Legislators in the state took action in the final days of June’s legislative session to approve a bill making parole possible for offenders who killed while under age 18 and Governor Bev Perdue signed the bill into law Friday. The new bill would require judges to consider the juvenile’s age, intellectual capacity, prior record, familial and peer pressure and other mitigating factors before handing down the sentence. Life still remains an option, but only for those convicted of premeditated murder. It’s important to note that the decision does not mean it’s unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison, only that statutes that make such sentences mandatory are no longer acceptable.

The bill acts as a major retooling of sentencing laws that defined the state’s criminal justice system for nearly the past 20 years. In 1994, the state basically abolished parole in what was known as the “truth-in-sentencing” reforms. Since then, inmates have been required to finish out their terms.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two cases of 14-year-old boys, one from Alabama and another from Arkansas, who were given life sentences for their roles in a murder. In the case of young people who participate in homicide, “a judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty.” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “We therefore hold that mandatory life without parole for those under age 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments.'”

Discreetly recording the police? There’s an app for that

Published on: July 11, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Just last week we did a post about the police in Charlotte’s use of license plate scanners. Now Yahoo has news of a civil rights group that’s trying to turn the tables on police. The New Jersey Branch of the Americans Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has created a new app that will allow users to discreetly monitor and record police activity. The mobile phone program is designed to hold police officers accountable for their behavior while interacting with the public.

The app, dubbed “Police Tape,” allows people to securely and inconspicuously record interactions with police officers. Currently the app is only available on Android devices, but another version for the iPhone will be released later in the summer. The ACLU says the device will act as a critical tool for monitoring the actions of law enforcement officers.

The ACLU’s New Jersey executive director, Deborah Jacobs, said, “Too often, incidents of serious misconduct go unreported because citizens don’t feel that they will be believed.” She says this app should go a long way to remedying that worry.

Unlike most, if not all, recording apps, “Police Tape” disappears from the screen once it has been launched, reducing the likelihood that a police officer will notice that the device has been engaged. cell phone - post 7.11.jpg The app also allows users to electronically transmit the file to the ACLU for safe-keeping and review. Further, the program contains legal information concerning the rights of citizens when confronted by police.

The recent announcement follows not far behind another app by the New York branch of the organization called “Stop & Frisk Watch.” The app does much the same thing, allowing citizens to clandestinely tape the NYPD police during a stop and relay the information to the local branch. According to the New York Amsterdam news, over 2,000 videos have been sent in thus far. Unlike “Police Tape,” when “Stop-and-Frisk Watch” is activated, it also triggers an alert to warn nearby users that a police stop is happening.

UNC Professor Held in Argentina On Drug Charges Close to Release

Published on: July 7, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

According to the News & Observer the UNC-Chapel Hill physicist that is currently being held in Argentina after being found with two kilos of cocaine is saying a personality disorder led him to being so easily lured into smuggling the drugs.

The professor, Paul Frampton, the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy, flew to South America in the first place only after having been tricked over the Internet into believing that he would be meeting a young model. Instead, when he arrived in Bolivia he was told to carry a suitcase to Argentina and ultimately on to the U.S. The drugs were stored in a kind of false bottom to the suitcase that was otherwise empty. Post #2 criminal image 7.5.12.jpg Frampton was arrested before he was to leave Argentina, while still in the main airport in Buenos Aires. He now faces up to 16 years in prison.

Frampton admits that a normal person would not have so readily agreed to such a scheme. “I’m an outlier in the naivety quotient as well as IQ,” he said. “I buy that. “There were, of course, warning signs that most people would have viewed with great suspicion, and this diagnosis as a defense explains the foolishness,” he said. “But I certainly had no idea there were illegal drugs and certainly had no idea of smuggling drugs to make money.”

Frampton’s defense lawyers said that they hired a forensic psychologist to meet with him while in prison and who was able to diagnose Frampton with a schizoid personality disorder that causes him to be unusually gullible. Friends and family say the news comes as absolutely no shock. His ex-wife, Anne-Marie Frampton, says, “He is totally devoted to physics and to his students, but in the rest of his life he has always been like a child.”

Other friends of the professor said that he has a history of similar unfortunate incidents, including the pursuit of young foreign women on the Internet. A friend and Nobel laureate said that Frampton once persuaded a Chinese woman in her 20s to marry him, but when he flew to China she took one look at him and changed her mind.

Frampton and the school are also now fighting over his pay after UNC decided to stop paying his salary saying that he was unable to do his job from an Argentine prison. He filed suit saying that he was able to perform his work from prison, having written two research papers and properly advised his graduate students via telephone. Just last week an Orange County judge turned down his request for an injunction.

Judge in Trayvon Martin case grants Zimmerman $1M bail

Published on: July 5, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

George Zimmerman, the Florida man charged with killing Trayvon Martin, was given a second chance earlier this week to get out of jail when the judge set bail at $1 million. In his ruling, Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Lester said that George Zimmerman manipulated the court during his first bond hearing in April and may have planned to flee with the more than $130,000 he collected through a personal website. Though they are pleased he was granted bail at all, Zimmerman’s defense attorneys say the new bail will be hard for their client to come up with.

Post #1 criminal image 7.3.12.jpg Judge Lester says that the increased bail amount is not meant as punishment, but instead it’s meant to allay concerns that Zimmerman intends to flee the jurisdiction. The judge believes that a lesser amount would not guarantee Zimmerman’s presence in court.

Judge Lester decided to revoke Zimmerman’s existing $150,000 bond last month after the state prosecutor accused Zimmerman and his wife of lying to the court about their financial assets during his initial bond hearing to obtain a lower bond. A hearing revealed how Zimmerman instructed his wife on how to transfer money from his bank account into hers and his sister’s while he was in jail, according to recordings of jail calls released by prosecutors.

Judge Lester essentially agreed with the State’s version of events and its portrayal of Zimmerman as a liar. He completely rejected the idea put forward by Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, that Zimmerman lied about his finances because he did not trust the system.

Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, 25, will also now face a perjury charge for allegedly lying about the couple’s finances. She too was briefly jailed before posting a $1,000 bond.

Cheating in UNC Football Program Sparks Criminal Probe

Published on: June 28, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

News from the Charlotte Observer of a suspicious summer course offering at UNC-Chapel Hill shows that a class with no instruction time was created just days before the summer semester began which was filled exclusively with football players.

The records show that in the summer of 2011, 19 students signed up for AMFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina. 18 of these students were current football players; the other man was a former player. Post #2 criminal image 6.28.jpg The players had the support of their academic advisors who knew there would be no actual instruction. The whole affair is now the subject of a full scale criminal investigation.

Additional records show that football and basketball players made up a majority of nine other suspect classes in which professors listed as instructors deny ever teaching. They are also claiming that their signatures were forged on records related to the courses. This amounts to significant evidence of academic fraud taking place at UNC. An internal search discovered there were 54 such classes, all but nine of which were taught by Julius Nyang’oro, the longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department. In each course the students were given one assignment, such as writing a term paper, and told to turn it in at the end of the summer term.

Bubba Cunningham, the current athletic director hired since the scandal took place has said that he is troubled by the news. “I just think this has uncovered some information that quite frankly, the university, we’re not proud of,” he said in an interview. “But we’ll continue to work to ensure that it doesn’t happen going forward.”

The issue began as a result of an investigation into the summer pay Nyang’oro received for the AMFAM 280 course. The search uncovered evidence that the university had paid the professor the standard fee for such a course, $12,000, but that it was contingent on the course being taught in lecture format. Nyang’oro decided to change the course to an independent study. The school is now trying to get the money paid out to the professor back.

Nyang’oro resigned as chairman of the department last September as UNC began an investigation into numerous independent studies and other suspicious course offerings in his department. He had been the department’s only chairman and earned as much as $171,000 per year.

License Plate Scanners Make Big Splash in North Carolina

Published on: June 27, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Raleigh police have a new weapon in their arsenal to track down criminals: a device mounted on a patrol car that automatically scans license plates, looking for cars that have been reported stolen. The system is known as Automated License Plate Recognition and is made up of four cameras atop the patrol car’s lights bar that are capable of scanning in every direction. The cameras then connect to a computer in the trunk of the car that is linked to the database found in the officer’s computer in the front seat.

The city purchased six of the nearly $19,000 devices and they’ve seen an impact, in just a few weeks they helped find at least four stolen plates and two stolen vehicles. It’s not surprising that they’re effective given that the devices are capable of scanning up to 3,000 license plates in an hour. Post #1 criminal image 6.26.jpg Along with alerting officers about stolen plates, the devices can assist with other crimes that may involve a suspect vehicle, such as missing individuals, bank robberies, or any other crime where a license plate was reported.

Though the devices are new in Raleigh, they’ve been in existence in Charlotte for some time. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department uses the scanners even more aggressively and has a policy which states that the scanners can be used to confirm a criminal suspect’s alibi regarding his whereabouts at a particular time and date and that the scanners can be used for predictive purposes. This means that the scanners can be turned on in high-risk crime areas to focus on unusual traffic patterns. Something the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes is profiling.

There are questions though about the incredible amount of data the police will be able to collect. Though the ACLU doesn’t specifically object to the technology, its local spokesman says that it raises tremendous privacy issues. Mike Meno of the ACLU North Carolina says, “The thing that is most troublesome to us is that in most cases the police will retain the data, even if a person is not charged with a crime.” The retained information could be used to help tie someone to a later criminal investigation or lead to tracking of people who have done nothing wrong.

Charlotte’s police are supposed to purge all information retained by the devices 18 months from the date it was recorded. Raleigh won’t hold onto the information for nearly as long, only keeping it for six months. Even this is too long according to the ACLU, after all, if the information is not being used to further an investigation then why keep it around at all?

Sandusky Found Guilty on 45 Counts of Child Sex Abuse

Published on: June 23, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

According to an article with CBSNews, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been found guilty of child sexual abuse. The jury in Pennsylvania deliberated for nearly 21 hours before handing down its verdict which was guilty on 45 of 48 counts.

The jury was composed of seven women and five men and delivered a surprisingly strong rebuke of the former coach, apparently not accepting any of the arguments put forth by his defense attorneys. Post #2 criminal image 6.21.jpg Sandusky remained standing with his head down staring at the jury box while the verdict was read into the record.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly took to a podium to declare that justice for 10 young men had finally been served. “This defendant, a serial child predator who committed horrific acts upon his victims, causing lifelong and life-changing consequences for all of them, has been held accountable for his crimes.”

Among the guilty counts were the most serious charges, those for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, each carrying a maximum 20 years in prison. There were nine counts of unlawful contact with minors, also carrying 20 years and 10 counts of endangering the welfare of a child with a seven-year maximum for each count.

One of the most emotional victims to testify at his trial was a boy now 18 known only as Victim #1. He broke down on the stand as he described being repeatedly sodomized by Sandusky beginning at the age of 13. Sandusky was found guilty on all six counts related to that young man.

Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola said, “I believe the jury acted genuinely and in good faith.” In the end he believed that the state’s evidence was just too much to overcome. “We were in an uphill battle, attempting to climb Mt. Everest from the bottom of the mount. Obviously, we didn’t make it.”

North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act Poised for Repeal

Published on: June 20, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

According to a recent article by WRAL, the North Carolina Racial Justice Act appears to be headed for repeal. SB 416, known as “An Act to Amend Death Penalty Procedures,” was passed by the North Carolina House of Representatives last week by a vote of 73-47, a veto-proof majority. More recently this bill was passed by a 30-18 vote in the state Senate. Now it is being presented to Gov. Beverly Perdue. This bill would significantly alter the Racial Justice Act as it appears today.

The Racial Justice Act, an important piece of legislation enacted in 2009, allows North Carolina death row inmates to reduce their sentences to life in prison without parole in certain circumstances. Post #1 criminal image 6.19.jpg Inmates must show that race played a substantive factor in “decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the county, the prosecutorial district, the judicial division, or the State at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed.” The law is controversial because it permits an inmate to challenge his or her sentence based on widespread racial bias instead of having to prove that there was discrimination in his or her particular case.

SB 416 will try and change all that. By limiting the use of statistics in proving widespread discrimination, the new bill aims to dramatically scale back the reach of the Racial Justice Act. The bill would allow inmates to present statistics only for the county or judicial district where the crime was committed, rather than statewide. Statistics will also be limited to a period of 10 years before the crime and two years after sentencing. Finally, statistics will not be enough to prove racial bias, defendants will have to show other evidence.

“This bill guts the NC Racial Justice Act, plain and simple,” Scott Bass, director of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, said in a statement. “This bill is an attempt to sweep that evidence under the rug by allowing the state to ignore mountains of statistics pointing to the pervasive and disturbing role that race plays in jury selection and sentencing,” said Sarah Preston of the ACLU of North Carolina. “We cannot turn our backs on such evidence, as this bill seeks to do.”

Portable Breathalyzers, are they worth the money?

Published on: June 14, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to refuse a breath test if you ever find yourself pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving. The reason is that the breath test results often form the crux of the state’s DUI case against you. A breath test that indicates a BAC greater than .08 makes a difficult case to defend that much harder. Some people think they can avoid this trap by purchasing pocket breathalyzers. These devices, ranging from $10 to $300, are advertised as means of allowing you to test yourself before driving home.

Recently, one news organization put one such Breathalyzer, the BACTrack S80, to the test. The $150 device is advertised as providing “professional accuracy at an affordable price.” Post #2 criminal image 6.14.jpg The organization conducted a controlled experiment to determine just how accurately the device measured a person’s BAC. The test also served as a training exercise for officers to help them recognize signs of an impaired driver.

Four women and one man were served measured amounts of alcohol designed to bring their BAC close to the .08 legal limit. The participants self-assessed the amounts of alcohol served; guessing that they were given the equivalent of two or three drinks a piece. After each round of drinks, the participants were asked to blow into both the police breath test device and the BACTrack S80. Almost every time, the BACTrack S80 device had a lower number than the police authorized device. Overall, the BACTrack S80 consistently registered lower blood alcohol levels than police Breathalyzer device.

This difference was most pronounced after the first round of drinks, which could lead to a false sense of security. Believing that his BAC is lower than it really is, a person may choose to drink more than otherwise planned, causing him to be more intoxicated than he intended or believes himself to be. Or, given the false sense of security of having a low Breathalyzer number, he may decide to drive despite actually being impaired.

One of the officers who helped conduct the test stressed that the number itself was not important. The number is more of a proxy of impaired driving rather than proof of impaired driving. Officers look first for actions such as inability to maintain a driving lane as proof of intoxication. If a person is caught driving in a manner that indicates he’s impaired, he will get pulled over.

Supreme Court to decide issue of cruel and unusual punishment for teens

Published on: June 12, 2012 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

A few months back the Supreme Court heard arguments surrounding two new cases up for review. Both involved the question of just how severe a penalty imposed on a juvenile offender must be before it is declared unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.

The first case, Miller v. Alabama, involved a 14-year-old in Alabama who beat an older man to death and subsequently burned his house down. Evan Miller, the teen, and a friend stole a collection of baseball cards and $300 from a neighbor. They attacked the man with a baseball bat, and killed him when they set fire to his home. Post #1 criminal image 6.12.jpg The second case, Jackson v. Hobbs, involved another 14-year-old boy in Arkansas who, along with two older boys, tried to rob a video store in 1999. One of the older boys involved in the robbery shot and killed the store clerk as he was going to call the police. Both Mr. Miller and Mr. Jackson received mandatory sentences of life without parole for murder.

Proponents for harsh penalties point to the “sanctity of life” as the reason a juvenile should be sentenced harshly for crimes involving killings. Their age should not be an excuse for punishment given the severity of their crimes. However, in oral arguments, Justice Ginsburg turned the argument around, noting that the same interest in the sanctity of an individual’s life could be used as justification for not severely punishing young offenders. By imposing a life sentence without the possibility on a 14-year-old, the state has essentially thrown away that person’s life.

Those opposed to handing down such harsh sentences believe that teenagers are immature and should be given a more lenient punishment because of that inexperience. While they acknowledge a life sentence is appropriate in such heinous situations, they believe that tacking away even the hope of parole is a step too far for such young criminals. Proponents of harsh punishment worry that teens have less incentive to commit such crimes in the future if they know that all they have to do is claim immaturity when they’re caught.