Raleigh Criminal Defense Law Blog

The beleaguered State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab has lost a valuable ally following the recent investigation into sloppy, if not fraudulent, procedures. The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys (NCCDA) has asked for a thorough investigation of all issues in every area of the lab. The NCCDA joins a long list of critics and places it shoulder-to-shoulder with the state's criminal defense attorneys in calling for the comprehensive review.

The organization believes that a full-scale audit will help to restore the public's confidence in the justice system. That confidence has been seriously eroded as the SBI lab's testing methods and ethical lapses have come to light in an investigative series in a Raleigh newspaper.

Last week, the attorney general's office reported the results of its audit of the lab's blood analysis unit. The results confirmed the newspaper's allegations that SBI analysts had withheld test results that they thought would not support a conviction. The practice may have compromised as many as 230 cases.

Most of the time, people are not arrested for drug charges during a police drug bust or sting operation. Instead, many people who are charged with drug possession or trafficking are arrested after police pull them over on the road.

On Monday, August 24, North Carolina police arrested Raphael Walters Rogers for drug trafficking after they found 9.1 pounds of heroin in the car in which Rogers was riding. Investigators estimated that there were roughly 12,000 dosages of heroin, and each goes for about $60 these days.

As summer winds down and Labor Day looms, North Carolina drivers are seeing more police and state troopers on the roads. Checkpoints have also sprung up across the state as the annual Booze It & Lose It campaign got underway last Friday, August 20. The initiative will run through Labor Day.

Sponsored by the Governor's Highway Safety Program (GHSP), Booze It & Lose It was introduced in 1994. The GHSP chose late August to Labor Day for rollout because of an historical uptick in DUI-related arrests and accidents. The program includes both enforcement and education components.

North Carolina law imposes serious penalties on drivers convicted of DUI. For example, drivers will lose their license for one year on their first conviction, four years on their second, and permanently on their third. A fourth conviction is a felony and carries significant jail time. Drivers can lose their vehicles, too.

A DUI is issued to drivers over 21 with a .08 or higher blood alcohol level. North Carolina has a zero tolerance for impaired drivers under 21 -- any level higher than .00 is a crime.

Shaquan Duley, a resident of South Carolina, confessed to murdering her two young sons. The boys were 18 months and 2 years old when their mother allegedly suffocated them by holding her hand over their mouths until they stopped breathing. She then placed their bodies in her car and claimed that they drowned when the car rolled into the Edisto River. She later confessed to the murders.

The Orangeburg County Sheriff says that he believes Ms. Duley was "distraught" after fighting with her own mother who was supporting the family financially. She was living with her mother along with her two sons and her 5-year-old daughter who is currently staying with her grandmother. It has been reported that her mother told her she was not taking good care of her children. The family tension led to the tragic deaths of her two sons.

The investigative report in a Raleigh newspaper last week caught the attention of criminal defense attorneys across North Carolina. The series highlighted some critical shortcomings -- and sparked some changes -- at the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab.

Fans of the television show "NCIS" know that crack forensic scientist Abby Sciuto has credentials as impressive as her tattoos. She bases her conclusions on precise science and demonstrates, week after week, a total dedication to the truth. Her ethics are seldom questioned.

Alas, SBI analysts often fall short of the Abby Ideal. One example in the report involved the conduct of a ballistics analysis in a case where the gun or guns involved had disappeared. The analyst had only bullets to examine under her microscope, with no photographs to back up her conclusions.

She testified with absolute certainty that the bullets found near the victim were shot from the same gun that had left casings at the defendant's feet. That testimony eliminated the defendant's contention that there was a second shooter. The defendant was convicted.

Firearms and toolmark identification is controversial to begin with, and most experts agree that an analysts' conclusions should be buttressed by photographs showing how the lands and grooves on the bullets match. In this case, though, no photographs were taken. And, subsequent examinations by outside experts found that the bullets are starkly different.

The result raises doubts about the education, training, and ethics of the analyst as well as her colleagues in the lab. 

In an investigative series published this week, a Raleigh newspaper has detailed some disturbing practices at the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). The findings are no surprise to many North Carolina criminal defense attorneys or their clients. They have known for some time that the SBI crime lab is on the prosecutor's team and, as such, isn't quite the independent scientific body that taxpayers believe it is.

North Carolina is one of 38 states where the state forensics lab reports to police or prosecutors. The SBI is a division of the Department of Justice, which is run by the state's most senior law enforcement officer, the attorney general. This reporting structure, experts say, puts the science squarely in the prosecutor's camp when it should be in neutral territory. Or, as they say on television, the science should serve the truth, not the person.

The crime lab came into the spotlight last February when it was discovered that a lab serologist had withheld crucial evidence in a case -- evidence that what prosecutors argued was blood on the defendant's SUV wasn't blood at all. The defendant was released from prison and exonerated.

Tuesday, August 10 was the last day for inmates to appeal their death sentences under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act (RJA). The law allows murder defendants to present evidence demonstrating that racial bias played a role in their conviction or denial of their appeals.

The deadline comes on the heels of the release of two studies that highlighted the racial disparities in North Carolina's capital cases.

In the study performed by the Michigan State University College of Law, researchers examined 5,800 North Carolina cases from 1990 to 2009; all of the cases they looked at were eligible for the death penalty. The data showed that:

• Defendants were 2.6 times more likely to be given the death penalty if at least one of the victims was white.
• More than 40 percent of inmates on death row were sent there by juries that were either all-white or that included only one person of color.
• During jury selection, prosecutors statewide struck qualified blacks from their juries more than twice as often as whites.

The second study, by the University of Colorado at Boulder, looked at capital cases from 1980 to 2007. In those cases, a death sentence was 2.96 percent more likely if the victim was white.

Where there is a will, there is a way. In the down economy, people are turning to sell whatever they don't need for some extra cash. A lot of times, that happens to be gold. An entire industry of businesses have been started to serve the nationwide cash-for-gold market, further incentivizing people to steal jewelry for a quick pawnshop payday. Gold sales are overwhelming anti-crime recordkeeping requirements originally designed for pawn shops, and police are beginning to take action.

The price for gold is high right now, prompting alarming upticks in the number of burglaries and thefts from state to state. Most cash-for-gold shops are very busy, and big cities are starting to take note. Milwaukee recently passed an ordinance to assist police in spotting stolen jewelry at such shops before it is too late to be recovered. In July, the Milwaukee Common Council passed vote to require all cash-for-gold shops to electronically submit a seller's name and photo to local authorities, as well as a photo of the items pawned. A similar measure was passed in Maryland last fall, requiring buyers to maintain a fixed location of purchase. Florida has begun requiring mail-in gold-purchasing businesses maintain a seller database readily available to police. It's feasible North Carolina could soon follow suit.