Articles Posted in Criminal Defense

Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “Do I need to hire an attorney if I have been falsely accused?”

A recent incident involving criminals robbing a hotel in South Charlotte was solved thanks to the help of technology. While the cameras at the hotel were useful, another device that proved a great benefit to officers was the suspect’s own cellphone. The reason is that the suspected criminal’s cellphone was used by police to place him at the scene of several crimes at exactly the moment when the offenses occurred.

Officers with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Westover Division say that using data contained in the suspect’s cellphone allowed them to clear more than a dozen thefts from their books. They said that before the records were reviewed they received the proper warrants to access his cellphone data. A spokesman said, “The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department always obtains a court order in compliance with state and federal law before tracking mobile phones except in cases involving exigent circumstances.”

So far the department has been quiet about this tactic, afraid that warning potential criminals will cut down on the usefulness of the tool. Despite that, locals with experience in criminal justice have come forward to say the practice is actually quite widespread. CMPD has revealed for instance that it has a contract with a company called Cellebrite which makes a box that can be connected to thousands of different cellphone models and even tablet computers and then extract current and deleted information.

A local professor who teaches cell phone forensics says that technology in existence today is precise enough to detect even slight changes in location. Officers plug a device into the cellphone which then extracts data that can later be accessed on a department computer.

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It was announced recently that several North Carolina communities would be pursuing money to put additional dashboard cameras in police cars. According to a recent report by WBTV, the city of Gastonia has announced its intention of purchasing some 60 in-dash cameras for Gastonia Police Department patrol cars. This comes after legislators have said they are also interested in rigging more of state highway patrol cars with the cameras.

As things stand now, more than half of the highway patrol cars in Charlotte do not have in-dash cameras. A spokesperson for the NC Highway Patrol says that tight budgets have prevented the department from equipping its cars with the cameras. The gadgets are quite expensive, and can run up to $5,000 a piece.

Despite the high cost, almost everyone agrees that the cameras can be extremely useful for both police officers and members of the community. The public can feel safe knowing that the officers are being watched and that if they behave inappropriately or illegally that their actions will be caught on camera. Several cases of police brutality across the country have been brought to light thanks to such cameras.

Law enforcement officials believe the cameras can be helpful in terms of providing evidence of what took place during a traffic stop. If at trial there’s a discrepancy over what took place, a quick look at the video can resolve the dispute. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department was involved in a case last year that proved the value to them of in-dash cameras. A teenager sued the department for injuries she claimed she sustained while being arrested. The video showed that the teen strangled herself with her own seatbelt while in the back of a CMPD patrol car.

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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. 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.

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The use of electronic monitors as an alternative means of punishment in Charlotte is about to expand, despite the growing amount of negative media attention the program has received. The program costs taxpayers $35,000 a month and even though a few unruly participants have decided it was better for them to cut off their monitors and run, the police have faith that the program is a good one and that it is working. It started back in 1997 and it is being expanded to cover more crimes and therefore more defendants.

Police believe that the program serves several purposes. It is a crime-solving tool, it is a means of deterring particularly young offenders, and it helps to prevent unnecessary jail/prison overcrowding for minor offenses. There is also the added benefit of being able to map out where crime is taking place based on the location of the monitors, which, according the police, outweighs the occasional “monitor-cutters on the run.”

Most of the defendants that the police are monitoring are those who have been charged with robbery or burglary, but the police have also been fitting domestic violence and sexual assault offenders with such monitors as a means of making sure that they stay far away from their victims. “Police can use the monitors to establish zones where the offender cannot go. If he or she crosses into that area–usually a set distance from the victim’s home or workplace–the monitor will alert the police.”

The program provides the police with a detailed alert of criminal activity and the location of the monitored individuals at the time of the crime. When someone reports a crime, the time and location of that crime is noted. If someone who is being monitored is within a set distance from that location of criminal activity, the police are alerted. The police have been receiving nearly 30 pages of alerts per day. Police say that it is just like any other investigative tool. It produces a lead, which then requires that the police conduct an investigation to prove whether the person being monitored was actually involved in the criminal activity.

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