This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the Supreme Court of North Carolina released on January 31, 2025. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.
North Carolina Constitution’s Article I, Section 27 prohibition of cruel or unusual punishments did not provide greater protection to defendant than the U.S. Constitution’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.
State v. Tirado, 267PA21, ___ N.C. ___ (Jan. 31, 2025). In this Cumberland County case, the Supreme Court majority affirmed an unpublished Court of Appeals decision denying defendant’s constitutional challenge to his sentences of life without parole for murders committed while he was a juvenile.
In August of 1998, defendant was seventeen years old, and a member of the Crips gang, when he participated in the abduction and robbery of three women; defendant and the gang killed two of the women, but one woman survived. Defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, but the sentence was reduced to two consecutive life sentences without parole after the holding in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), that sentencing juvenile offenders to death was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court subsequently held in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), that a mandated life without parole sentence for a juvenile was unconstitutional, but permitted sentencing where the trial court had discretion to impose a lesser sentence. Defendant was resentenced in accordance with the Miller-fix statute adopted by the General Assembly, resulting in the imposition of two consecutive terms of life without parole in March 2020. The Court of Appeals affirmed the sentences in the unpublished decision State v. Tirado, COA20-213 (June 15, 2021), leading to the current opinion.
On appeal, defendant argued that Article I, Section 27 of the North Carolina Constitution was more protective than the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and his sentences were cruel or unusual punishments and unconstitutional under North Carolina law. The Supreme Court disagreed, explaining that the Cruel or Unusual Punishment clause in the North Carolina Constitution prohibited imposing sentences beyond those authorized by law. The Court reached this conclusion by conducting a historical analysis of the clause along with Article XI, which provides a list of acceptable punishments and has no analogue in the U.S. Constitution. Summarizing the function of these two provisions, the Court noted:
Because a constitution cannot violate itself, we must construe Article I, Section 27’s proscription of cruel or unusual punishments and Article XI’s enumeration of acceptable punishments harmoniously. Logically, therefore, the punishments the people sanctioned in Article XI, Sections 1 and 2 are inherently not “cruel or unusual” in a constitutional sense. Accordingly, an act of the General Assembly cannot violate the Cruel or Unusual Punishments Clause by prescribing a punishment allowable under Article XI, Sections 1 and 2, and similarly, judges cannot violate Article I, Section 27, by handing down a sentence in obedience to such an act.
Slip Op. at 32 (cleaned up). Although defendant argued the North Carolina Constitution was more protective, the Court explained that the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause provided more protection in modern jurisprudence and concluded the Court of Appeals properly evaluated and decided defendant’s appeal in light of the protections afforded by both.
The Court also determined that the trial court’s sentence complied with State v. Kelliher, 381 N.C. 558 (2022), as that opinion was released after defendant’s appeal. First the Court noted defendant’s case did not meet the criteria of that opinion because “Kelliher applies only to juvenile homicide offenders whom the trial court (1) expressly finds to be neither incorrigible nor irredeemable and (2) sentences to multiple, consecutive terms of life with parole.” Slip Op. at 43. Then the Court clarified that a portion of the Kelliher opinion was obiter dictum, as “the statement requiring the trial court to make an express finding of incorrigibility before sentencing a defendant to life without parole was unnecessary in determining the outcome of the case.” Id. at 44.
Justice Berger, joined by Justices Barringer and Allen, concurred but wrote separately to express concerns with the Kelliher opinion and the precedential weight to which it is entitled. Id. at 46.
Justice Earls, joined by Justice Riggs, concurred in the result only and argued that the majority’s assertions regarding Article I, Section 27 were unnecessary and should be interpreted as dicta. Id. at 50.
Computer-generated phone records were not testimonial in nature and did not implicate the Confrontation Clause
State v. Lester, 293PA23-2, ___ N.C. ___ (Jan. 31, 2025). In this Wake County case, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals decision holding the State violated the Confrontation Clause and hearsay rules by admitting exhibits of Verizon phone records. The Supreme Court held that if the records were truly machine generated, they were not hearsay or testimonial in nature, and remanded the case for the consideration of defendant’s remaining issues.
In 2022, defendant came to trial for statutory rape of a child fifteen years or younger. During the State’s case, two detectives testified about their investigation into defendant, and they referenced exhibits of phone records provided by Verizon. The two exhibits in question were a list of “the time, date, and connecting phone number for all calls to and from [defendant’s] phone between May and July 2019” and a cover letter stating the records were “true and accurate copies of the records created from the information maintained by Verizon in the actual course of business.” Slip Op. at 6. Defendant objected to the exhibits, and the State argued the records were admissible under Rule of Evidence 803(6) as business records. The trial court did not admit the records under Rule 803(6), but instead under Rule 803(24), the residual exception, as the trial court felt the State did not lay a proper foundation for business records. In State v. Lester, 291 N.C. App. 480 (2023), the Court of Appeals reversed defendant’s conviction, holding that admitting the records was a violation of defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights and the error was prejudicial, justifying a new trial.
Taking up the arguments, the Court explained that the purpose of the Confrontation Clause was to protect against the unreliable nature of out-of-court testimonial statements made by humans, specifically “ex parte examinations” offered against the accused. Slip Op. at 11. Here, the evidence in question was computer-generated data, and the Court noted this was not the type of evidence contemplated by the Confrontation Clause. After explaining the unique nature of machine-generated data and why it was more reliable that a human witness’s out-of-court statement, the Court held that ‘machine-generated raw data, if truly machine-generated,’ are ‘neither hearsay nor testimonial’ under the Confrontation Clause.” Id. at 17 (quoting State v. Ortiz-Zape, 367 N.C. 1, 10 (2013)). The Court emphasized that “we focus here on data produced entirely by the internal operations of a computer or other machine, free from human input or intervention” in contrast to “(1) computer-stored evidence, and (2) human interpretations of computer-produced data.” Id. at 18. Because the machine-generated data did not implicate the Confrontation Clause in the same way that human interpretations of the data would, the Court determined the Court of Appeals improperly analyzed the admissibility of the exhibits in the current case.
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