Episode 18: Chambers, Bowman, and Joyner

[00:00:05.886] [UNKNOWN] Thank you.
[00:00:11.218] [SPEAKER_00] Since 2021, General Statute 15A-1215 has provided that if an alternate juror replaces a juror after deliberations have begun, the court must instruct the jury to begin its deliberations anew. The North Carolina Supreme Court has now held that substitution of an alternate juror pursuant to that statute does not violate a defendant's state constitutional right to a unanimous verdict by a jury of 12. We'll be discussing that case state v. chambers today. I'm Joseph Hyde with the University of North Carolina School of Government. And I'm Jonathan Holbrook with the North Carolina Conference of DAs. And this is Turning States, a podcast for North Carolina prosecutors and others interested in the criminal justice system in North Carolina. John, I think there was some older North Carolina Supreme Court precedent that seemed to indicate that substitution of a juror after deliberations had begun represented a violation of the defendant's state constitutional rights. What's different about Chambers?
[00:01:08.638] [SPEAKER_01] I agree with you, Joe. That was the Court of Appeals. That was a big part of their rationale when they decided this case, citing back to this case State v. Bunning and saying it was a constitutional violation. But the Supreme Court sees it differently. And I think in their view, it mainly comes down to the changes in the statute. But this Supreme Court opinion that we got was issued on May 23rd of this year. It was on discretionary review of the Court of Appeals opinion that we got back in 2024. And sort of an interesting side note before we start, when that Court of Appeals decision was decided in 2024, It was fairly quickly stayed pending this review, but this has been a big deal for prosecutors because we had subsequent cases that despite Chambers being stayed, they were still relying on it. Ingram was one, Watlington was another, that Chambers was still being applied to find that this post beginning of deliberations substitution of an alternate was error. And now the North Carolina Supreme Court is coming back and going the other way. But just a quick recap of the facts, if you don't remember from the Court of Appeals case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder An assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury. All of this relating to a shooting that happened at a Raleigh motel. This is a Wake County case. The deliberations, they started around 4.44 p.m. on April 7th of 2022. That's when they began. And then around 5.11 p.m. is when one juror, juror number five, asked to be excused because there's a medical appointment that the juror has to make it to the next morning. And so the court allows that, excuses juror number five, puts in the first alternate juror complying with the instructions of this modified statute, instructing them to restart their deliberations from the beginning. And so they do that. They ultimately find the defendant guilty of both of the charges, and they sentence him to life in prison. Of course, he filed a petition for writ of cert, and the Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that, new statute or not, that this was not permissible, that they said that that was a violation of his constitutional right. they said that this statute this results in juries of more than 12 persons determining his guilt or innocence and they cite back to that state v bunning case and so now on discretionary review the supreme court is looking at it to evaluate the constitutionality of this new provision 15a 1215. And Joe, you mentioned this. This statute was amended to the current version in 2021, and it now has these provisions that says, essentially, we will keep the alternates even after deliberations begin. And if an alternate needs to be substituted in after deliberations have begun, that can happen with these two additional requirements. And one is that the trial court must instruct the jury to restart its deliberations after the substitution of the alternate. And there is this express mandate baked in that says no more than 12 jurors will participate in the deliberations that ultimately lead to the verdict in the case that they are deciding. And the Supreme Court, analyzing all this, says they decide that the unconstitutionality has not been shown. And they feel like those two—they call them critical safeguards that they think make the difference with these provisions that are now added to the 15A-1215— And they say that those requirements preserve the constitutionality of the statute. The jury is, they point out that juries are generally presumed to follow the court's instructions. And so, yes, there was once another juror who was participating in those deliberations, but juror number five has been excused for the doctor's appointment, so now alternate number one has stepped in. But if we instruct them to begin their deliberations anew and we presume that they are complying with those instructions, then your verdict is being returned by a unanimous jury of only 12 members. And they address that case, that Bunning case, and the Supreme Court here says, in their view, Bunning does not compel a different result. My recollection of Bunning is that I think the judge in that case actually did instruct the jurors to begin their deliberations, to start fresh, even though that wasn't the version of the statute. But the Supreme Court here says, in their view, the majority at least, does not consider it to be controlling precedent that they can't reconcile with the statute. There's a line where they say, although Bunning cites Article I, Section 24 of our state constitution in its juror substitution discussion, its conclusion was founded upon It's statutory analysis. In other words, yes, we have this past case bunning that says this was a violation of a unanimous verdict, but that case was looking at a different statute than the one we have in front of us now. You know, the current statute says this is permissible. We can do this. And we have these safeguards to make sure that the process doesn't run afoul of a constitutional issue. They also distinguish bunning in a couple of different ways. You know, they talk about the fact that in bunning, what we actually had was one jury that was deciding the guilt or innocence issue, and then the alternate was substituted in during the sentencing phase of the defendant's capital trial. And I think they view that as being at least a noteworthy difference, right? We've literally got one set of 12 people deciding you're innocent or guilty, a different set of 12 people deciding you will or will not get the death penalty for the thing that we air quotes, we have decided that you are guilty of. They say the juror who was excused had already participated in the deliberations that led to the verdict of guilty. And in their view, that is a difference, a difference worth noting, that we're not talking about that here. Here, it would literally just be these 12 people that are deciding the entirety of the issue. And so they say for these reasons, the decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. And I believe these other cases, Watlington, Ingram, that those are, you know, going to be subject to a remand or revisiting in light of the decision that we've now got. But this wasn't a unanimous Supreme Court opinion, right? We've got a dissent here. We did. We did. Justice Riggs, I think, feels very differently about this. In her view, what we're talking about, your constitutional right to a unanimous jury of 12, in her view, if that is violated, that is structural error. That is not something that can just be cured by instructions to the jury, nor is it something that a statute could address, right? I mean, you know, we couldn't have a statute, Joe, you and I talked about this case earlier, and I think I'm certainly not quoting from the dissent, I'm just making an analogy, but I mean, the thing that came to mind for me was, hey, you have a constitutional right to counsel. We couldn't pass a statute that says, Sure, there's a right to counsel, but not for left-handed people. Here's a statute where safeguards to make sure that only left-handed people are denied. No, right? It wouldn't matter if you complied with the statute. It would still be a structural error. And in her view, that's what she says.
[00:07:46.211] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that's what I find a little bit curious about the majority opinion here, right? Because you can't really blame the Court of Appeals for thinking that older case, Bunning, was interpreting a constitutional right. the majority acknowledges that it recited this constitutional provision for the proposition that a defendant's right to a jury of 12 was violated, the statute notwithstanding. So now they're going back and saying, well, okay, we recognize we cited a constitutional provision, but that was really a statutory analysis. And when the legislature changed the statute, that's going to produce a different result. It shouldn't change the constitutional analysis, right?
[00:08:19.468] [SPEAKER_01] You know, I think it's interesting, Joe. I think maybe it's a little bit of a chicken and egg kind of problem, right? I mean, because... The majority is saying, we don't have a structural error. I mean, we don't have more than 12 people participating in the deliberations that lead to this verdict. And we know that we don't have that because we're giving them these instructions that say, throw away and forget everything that you talked about before. Start back from square one, you new set of 12 people. You now begin your deliberations anew and you will come back with a verdict. So, you know, in the majority's view, If they're starting those deliberations now, anew, then, you know, your constitutional right to a unanimous jury of 12 has been preserved. I think maybe Justice Riggs is seeing it from the other side. You know what I mean? In her view, it's a structural error when we bring in this 13th person. And then she actually points out in the dissent, It says, curative instructions are insufficient to remedy a constitutional structural error. So I think in her view, it becomes an error when you drop in the 13th person and we can't fix that with instructions that tell the new set of 12 to forget what the person who's gone told them. It's a question of, I guess, where you think we're starting in the
[00:09:35.096] [SPEAKER_00] process. Well, right. And that's the thing that occurs to me, right, is it's not always clear whose ox is being gored here. Because on the one hand, it could be that juror who was excused would be inclined to convict. And it turns out the state in that scenario has to convict now 13 people instead of 12, making it harder for the state to get a conviction. On the other hand, this might have been a jury that was headed toward a mistrial or an acquittal based on that one holdout. And if it was that one holdout that was dismissed, that was excused, all of a sudden the state has essentially been given another bite at the apple here. So I can certainly see kind of the constitutional parameters of that argument. And if it is in fact a constitutional right, it's not something that can
[00:10:13.958] [SPEAKER_01] be frittered away by changing the statute. You know, and I think Justice Riggs also maybe just has more doubts than the majority does about whether the newly constituted group of 12 can truly just forget everything that they might have talked about. Now, in this particular example, I mean, the person was in the room for what, 15 minutes or something, you know, and then had to step out. Maybe that's a little bit of an easier case. But, you know, she says a little later in the dissent, there is a great and obvious risk that the other jurors could measure the newcomer's position, logic, and arguments against those previously expounded by the excused juror. You know, in other words, like in a Bruton situation or something, you know, we do have other examples where we say that even if normally we believe jurors can just follow instructions, do exactly what they're told when we tell them, hey, disregard that hearsay testimony. We presume that they're going to do that. But there are some examples where we say this is too much for us to reasonably expect that people can just forget it and push it aside. And I think. In her view, this would be one of those where they've participated in these deliberations, but the majority disagrees. You know, they feel like if we tell them to start over and we tell them to disregard, then we believe they're going to follow those instructions. So again, we've talked a lot about kind of the two sides of this, but I mean, the majority view is essentially for prosecutors so that they know The majority view is saying the new version of the statute, 15A.12.15, is constitutional. From here forward, we can swap in an alternate if we need to do that, that it passes constitutional muster in our Supreme Court's view. And I would also maybe just close by saying, I think Justice Riggs makes some good points, but it's also the fact that Many other jurisdictions have allowed this for a long time. Right. I mean, I think this is allowed in the federal system, a lot of other states. And so, you know, we're certainly not alone in deciding that if we tell them to start over and we accept that they are making a genuine effort to do that, then your constitutional right to a jury of 12 has been preserved. And I think now post chambers, that's where North Carolina is with our new statute.
[00:12:13.182] [SPEAKER_00] Right. The second case we've got on for today actually also involves an issue of unanimity, but in a slightly different context. This is State v. Bowman, decided by the North Carolina Supreme Court on May 23rd, 2025. This was a case out of Durham County. According to the facts, in March of 2019, defendant and SB, that's the pseudonym they give to the victim here, defendant and SB met online and later began an intimate relationship. In September of 2019, SB woke up to defendant banging on her window, demanding entry. SB let the defendant in. Defendant accused SB of sleeping with another man. Defendant punched SB in the chest. Defendant then drew a gun and demanded that SB remove her clothes. While pointing a gun at her head, defendant penetrated SB anally with his fingers and also with his penis. He forced SB to perform fellatio, forced SB to have vaginal sex with him. In October of 2019, defendant was indicted for seven different offenses, and pertinent to this case before us, it included two counts of first-degree forcible sexual offense. After an initial mistrial, defendant was tried again in January of 2022. In its jury instructions on forcible sexual offense, the trial court defined sexual act as fellatio, anal intercourse, or object penetration. The trial court also instructed the jury on the requirement for unanimity. It sounds to me like from the Court of Appeals opinion and Supreme Court opinion that the trial court gave one instruction on that particular offense. So it wasn't two different instructions based on the two different charges, but one instruction where it defined a sexual act as fellatio, anal intercourse, or object penetration. The jury found defendant guilty of both counts of forcible sex offense, and the defendant gave notice of appeal. Before the Court of Appeals, the majority held over a dissent that the trial court plainly erred by instructing the jury on only one count first-degree forcible sexual offense. Apparently, the verdict forms did not require the jury to specify what conduct gave rise to the finding of a sexual act, whether it was fellatio, object penetration, or anal intercourse. The North Carolina Supreme Court began its opinion by pointing out that the North Carolina Constitution and our general statutes require unanimity in the jury verdict in a criminal jury trial. Under North Carolina Supreme Court precedent, the requirement of unanimity is satisfied if the trial court instructs the jury disjunctively as to various alternative acts which will establish an element of the offense. In other words, the jury need not be unanimous in finding a particular act among alternatives that could give rise to an element of the offense. First degree sexual offense is a sexual act with another person by force and against the will of the other person. That's under general statute 14-27.16. A sexual act by statute includes cunnilingus, fellatio, analingus, anal intercourse, or object penetration, but does not include vaginal intercourse. Forcible vaginal intercourse would be rape. A case called State v. Hartness established that the risk of non-unanimity does not arise when the statute does not list as elements discrete criminal activities in the disjunctive in the same manner as statutes that enumerate proscribed activities, each of which is a discrete offense. For indecent liberties, as in hardness, there is no unanimity problem where the jury unanimously found sexual conduct. In other words, you don't have to have a unanimous jury as to each kind of whatever act that it was. Six could find fellatio and six could find object penetration, so long as they unanimously found that requirement for the element of sexual conduct. Alternatively, in a case called Steffi Diaz, the North Carolina Supreme Court established that disjunctive instructions resulted in an ambiguous verdict where you have an offense like drug trafficking, where the statute makes several different acts separate offenses. So for example, Drug trafficking makes the sale, manufacture, delivery, transportation, and possession separate offenses, and you would have a unanimity problem if the jury returned a verdict of guilty of drug trafficking, where six jurors found manufacture and six jurors found delivery, because those are actually two separate crimes. There's kind of a good summary of that rule in Bowman itself, where it said in a case called State v. Lyons, we clarify that the critical difference between the line of cases represented by Diaz and by Hartness is that the former line establishes that a disjunctive instruction, which allows the jury to find a defendant guilty if he commits either of two underlying acts, either of which is itself a separate offense, is fatally ambiguous because it's impossible to determine whether the jury unanimously found that the defendant committed one particular offense. The latter line establishes that if the trial court merely instructs the jury disjunctively as to various alternative acts which will establish an element of the offense, the requirement of unanimity is satisfied.
[00:17:02.993] [SPEAKER_01] So, Joe, I'm just trying to make sure I got my head wrapped around this right. I mean, if the charge is assault with a deadly weapon, we don't care if some of the jurors think it was a handgun. Some of them think it was a knife. Some of them think it was a baseball bat. The point is it's a deadly weapon. Right. So you can get to that one element different ways. But if we're talking about an assault on a victim who was either a female. Or a child under 12 or, you know, something like that. And we don't know for sure that they all agreed about the nature of the victim. Now we're talking about literally different offenses. And so it would be a unanimity issue if we didn't know for sure that they had all found the same thing on those.
[00:17:38.075] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that's right. The difference is between different acts that could constitute the element of one offense. The single element of the offense. Of one offense or alternatively, a non-unanimity as to several different offenses and we can't be sure that the jury was unanimous in finding the defendant guilty of that particular offense. You can see a difficulty arising, however, in a statute perhaps or a new statutory offense that hasn't been construed to fall into one of these particular lines because it's not always clear whether the statute is criminalizing particular conduct as a separate offense or or whether it's going to be different acts that give rise to one element of one larger offense. But in any event, in this case, the North Carolina Supreme Court found no problem in saying forcible sexual offense is the type of offense for which different acts can constitute an element. And it's not a unanimity problem if the jury is not unanimous as to what that particular conduct was, so long as they all found that the defendant committed this singular offense. And this actually was supported by a prior precedent called State v. Faust, where the North Carolina Supreme Court had upheld the defendant's conviction for first degree sex offense, though the instruction allowed the jury to find the defendant committed anal intercourse or fellatio. Again, same kind of problem, different conduct, but satisfying the singular element of one offense. In Faust, the North Carolina Supreme Court advised that the better practice was for the trial court to submit separate issues of each unlawful sexual act if more than one exists. So it actually recommended a practice whereby the verdict form would give the jury the opportunity to say what is the act that gave rise to this particular element. Here, as in Faust, the instructions as a whole provided adequate certainty as to unanimity, even though the verdict sheets were not consistent with that better practice that had been recommended in Faust. Still, the evidence in this case, the North Carolina Supreme Court said, permits the conclusion that there was possible unanimity and the instructions emphasize the need for unanimity. And here's a direct quote, because the trial court's jury instructions and the evidence on record cleared the verdict of any ambiguity, we cannot say that the trial court violated Mr. Bowman's right to a unanimous jury verdict, let alone that it constituted plain error. The Court of Appeals decision was reversed and it was remanded back to the Court of Appeals for consideration of the defendant's remaining issues.
[00:19:53.718] [SPEAKER_01] So, Joe, would your takeaway for prosecutors if they have a similar case like this, right, where, you know, there's allegations that the defendant, I don't know, maybe committed sexual offense by these three different acts or something. Would we want that on the verdict sheet, right, for the jury to indicate each of those acts that they found? I'm sort of thinking of how I've seen this come up in other issues like a homicide, you know, if they think that we haven't. offered sufficient evidence of premeditation deliberation, something like that. What if the Court of Appeals on review in this case said, you know what? We don't think there was any substantive evidence that the second alleged act ever occurred. And for all we know, that might be the only one that they were unanimous in finding. So I guess I'm struggling with where we would recommend prosecutors draw a line on special verdicts for every single facet of the case versus making sure we don't get sent back on appeal because how do we know for sure that they weren't only unanimous on the one thing we're finding insufficient evidence of
[00:20:49.669] [SPEAKER_00] or something like that? Yeah, well, I mean, that case Faust recommended that the special verdict be submitted when you have a situation where various acts can give rise to a finding of a particular element. And as you pointed out, the benefit of doing that, right, is that if on appeal, a reviewing court finds insufficient evidence to support one of those theories, so long as the jury was unanimous in finding the other, it's not necessary to send it back for a new trial. that would be the benefit of recommending a verdict sheet that specifies what the particular conduct was. Now, whether that's required, Bowman upheld a conviction where the special verdict sheets were not used. Now, it's significance that this was a plain error argument, not an objection that was preserved at trial. So it's certainly not required, but it could give, in the scenario that you mentioned, it could give the state kind of a fallback position if later on one of those theories was found not to be supported by sufficient evidence.
[00:21:42.240] [SPEAKER_01] So then our last case we had on for today was State v. Joyner. This one was decided by the Court of Appeals, not the Supreme Court. This was one we got on May 21st of this year. This is a case out of Hertford County where the defendant was found guilty after a jury trial of first-degree murder. And it arose out of a shooting that happened on February 26th of 2021. Short version of the background is that the defendant in this case had previously been in a romantic relationship for about four years with a woman named China that started in 2017 when they were in high school and also working together. That went on for some period of time, about four years. It ended around December of 2020. And then China began a romantic relationship with a new individual named Vashon Smith, who unfortunately ends up as the victim in this case. And as I said, all this came to a head on February 26th of 2021. The opinion gives a fairly detailed summary of what's going on. But in essence, China and Vaughn were together. They were going to a couple of different places, spending time with some family. the defendant was communicating with China, talking about how he wanted to come by her house or that he wanted to speak with her and driving over to where he thought they were going to be. All of this comes to a head when the defendant is essentially on the road in his car behind the car containing the victim, Vashon, and the female, China. The defendant quickly passes their car, stops in front of theirs. There's a little bit more driving, ultimately getting back to the driveway of the victim's house. The victim gets out of the car. The defendant gets out of his car. They begin fighting. In the course of the fight, they essentially move away from the driveway at the house and out into the yard. China would say that she's in the driveway watching the fight. She sees Vashon retreating, backing away from the defendant, walking away, and then sees the defendant fire multiple shots at Vashon causing him to fall face forward on the ground and of course was ultimately killed. And as I said, the jury convicted the defendant of first degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. So the issues that are before us on appeal, there are actually four of them that are raised in the appeal. Number three of the four is the main one that caught my eye and that I thought prosecutors might be interested in. Just to talk about the others quickly, the first issue that was raised by the defendant is comments that were made by the judge while the trial was going on. At the end of the first day of jury selection, the trial court introduced the sheriff of Hartford County, who happened to be in the courtroom, introduced him to the potential jurors, said, before y'all leave, the high sheriff has come to the courtroom. Sheriff, stand up. I'm sure you all know him. And then apparently throughout the rest of the five-day trial, the court thanked the jurors for their service on behalf of the sheriff, They say approximately 16 times. And so the defendant is arguing this indicates essentially a leaning of the court in favor of the state, sort of intimating this close association or preference or favoritism towards the state. The Court of Appeals is not persuaded of that. They say that introducing the sheriff to the jury and repeatedly thanking the jury for their service on behalf of the sheriff, in the Court of Appeals' words, they say was more than usual, but they say we cannot... Read unusual, right? Read bizarre. It's a very strange thing for the trial court to do, right? It's odd. I don't think I've ever had that experience before, or certainly not that... repeated. I don't know why the comment was made over and over again, but evidently it was some 16 times. And so they say, that is unusual, but we cannot say that the trial court made an improper expression of judicial leaning, you know, that it didn't go so far as to indicate to the jurors that we're all on the state's team and you should be too, something like that. So, and then they say, even if the remarks had been erroneous, the defendant is unable to show prejudicial error because the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming. The second issue they raise is about the evidence that was introduced involving the victim's bloody clothing. They say that that was essentially prejudicial under Rule 403 because any probative value that it had was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice showing this terrible evidence to the jury, and the court disagrees. They say that what was offered, the bloody shirt, the shorts, the pants that the victim was wearing at the time, They were admitted into evidence to illustrate the testimony of one of the officers who was testifying. And they say the clothing was not excessively displayed or discussed at trial. And, you know, they used this to show how and where Vashon was shot. I mean, so it had a relevant probative purpose. It wasn't gratuitous or excessive. And so they reject the claim that it was unfairly prejudicial. Jumping ahead to that final argument, and then we'll come back and talk a little more about the third. But the fourth issue that was raised dealt with the state's closing argument. The state made comments in its closing about how the defendant in this case had taken a concealed carry class, that he had gotten his permit to carry a concealed handgun. And during the state's cross-examination, they had gotten an answer of yes from him when they asked, And in your carrying concealed weapon class, they told you that if you were in fear for your life, you could shoot. And, you know, the defendant says yes to that. And so that's what the state is arguing, is that in essence, this was a sort of a ready-made excuse that he was given. Defendant was told in that class, if you're in fear of your life, you can use your weapon. So he knew all he had to do was say he was in fear of his life. He created the situation so he could say that. And the defense is arguing that this is essentially improper because the statement of what the instructor may have told him at a concealed carry class was improperly admitted hearsay. So it was wrong for the state to be relying on this. The court rejects that. There was no objection that was made at the time. It was not improper to mention it at closing. So the state did not rely on improperly admitted hearsay. But more to the point, they just say the state is allowed to argue the facts in evidence and all reasonable inferences drawn therefrom.
[00:27:38.843] [SPEAKER_00] This is interesting only because there's that qualification to the rule about sufficiency of the evidence, that for a sufficiency of the evidence challenge, you consider all evidence that was admitted competent or not. And the reason that qualification is there is so that a defendant can't do this sort of double step where you say, well, that evidence was admitted in error, and so you don't consider it under the sufficiency of the evidence, and absent that evidence, I would have been acquitted. It seems like they're doing the same kind of thing with the closing argument here. So long as the evidence actually came in, The prosecutor is permitted to argue it in closing. Whether it should have come in or not is a different issue, and we can argue about that. But once it's in front of the jury, it's fair game for closing argument.
[00:28:15.943] [SPEAKER_01] You know, and I think the court is kind of looking to the broader point of, I mean, would it even be hearsay, Joe? I mean, you know, offered for the truth of the matter, asserted, more to the point of you learned or what you took away from your concealed carry class was if you shoot somebody, here's what you say to get out of it. You know, something along those lines. And I think they're saying... That's an inference, an interpretation of the evidence that the state could argue to the jury about what they should think about his claim of self-defense, and they say that that was proper. So those were three of the four. Saving the best for last, and the reason that I thought this would be a great one for us to talk about, is that there's an objection or an issue being raised on appeal by the defense about the forensic download of the defendant's cell phone. And the defendant is arguing that the state failed to lay a proper foundation for the admission of this evidence in violation of Rule 901. Now, again, the court points out they review an unpreserved issue because there was not an objection at trial. So they're only looking at it for plain error. But this caught my eye because this is a question that I know prosecutors have asked me a number of times, that we've had forensic downloads, Selbright extractions of phones. This has been going on for decades. And I think most of the time, prosecutors don't run into a lot of difficulty at the trial level explaining to the judge why this officer or maybe this person from the state crime lab or whoever it may be should be a sufficient witness to get it admitted. But when there has been pushback from the defense, on numerous occasions, I've had prosecutors call me and say, hey, Holbrooke, what's the case that says this is sufficient authentication? This is a good enough foundation to get it in. And to the best of my ability to research, we didn't have one. You know, there was an unpublished case that talked about sort of in theory, had there been an objection at trial, the state probably could have laid a foundation or something along those lines. But as far as I know, at long last, we have that now, that we've got the court saying, yes, this detective coming into court saying, I performed the extraction on this phone. I hooked it up to the Cellbrite machine. This is the extraction. Here it is unaltered in court. And now let's talk about the contents of the phone. They say that is, as we always assumed it would be but didn't have a case to back us up, a relatively straightforward authentication discussion under Rule 901 . That detective coming into court is a witness with knowledge of what the evidence is, that that is sufficient to meet that reasonably low threshold of making a prima facie showing. sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims, or the way we often hear it, you know, that it is what it purports to be, this really is the extraction. And so, in this case, they say, Sergeant Lassiter, having been the person who examined the phone and performed its data extraction, sufficiently showed that he had knowledge that the matter is what it is claimed to be, and therefore properly authenticated the evidence before the trial court admitted it. When I talk to prosecutors about this, I often point out that this 901 is a good one to look at. I would also bolster that argument talking about Rule 901 . You know, things that are the result of a known, reliable process or system. And 901B4, looking at the characteristics of the evidence in conjunction with the facts of the case. You know, the reason to believe it's his phone. So not a surprising outcome, but sort of a sigh of relief, I guess, on my part that we finally have some published case we can cite to to say, yes, this issue gets decided exactly the way that we thought it should be.
[00:31:36.190] [SPEAKER_00] And then just to put a pin on it, Joyner ultimately upholds the defendant's conviction. No error. Is that right? Exactly.
[00:31:41.951] [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. So they say for the foregoing reasons, we find no error. So his murder conviction is upheld.
[00:31:47.092] [SPEAKER_00] Well, that's all for today. In this episode, we discussed State v. Chambers regarding the substitution of an alternate juror after deliberations have begun, State v. Bowman regarding unanimity concerns with a disjunctive jury instruction, and State v. Joyner, which is finally we've got that case about authentication of a forensic download of a cell phone. Turning States is a collaboration between the University of North Carolina School of Government and the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. We're coming to you from the recording studio at the School of Government in Chapel Hill. Special thanks to our producer, Paul Bonner, and to Gustav Holz for our music. If you liked what you heard today, if you have questions, comments, concerns, if there's a topic you'd like for us to cover, please contact us. My name is Joseph Hyde, and I can be reached at jhyde at sog.unc.edu. That's jhyde at sog.unc.edu.
[00:32:39.453] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Jonathan Holbrook. I can be reached at jonathan.p.holbrook at nccourts.org. That's j-o-n-a-t-h-a-n.p. Thank you,
[00:32:56.913] [SPEAKER_00] John. That would be the showing for the state.
[00:33:00.096] [SPEAKER_01] Sounds good, Joe. Thanks. Hope it helped.
[00:33:15.791] [UNKNOWN] Thank you. THE END