Charlotte Criminal Lawyer Blog
Attorney J. Bradley Smith answering the question: “If I simply intend to plead guilty, why do I need a lawyer?”
In a bizarre episode, police in Raleigh say that the man caught on camera breaking into the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences over the weekend has surrendered to authorities. Police say that Joshua Matt Pace surrendered late Sunday evening, less than 24 hours after police broadcast footage of him breaking into the museum. What makes the whole episode so strange is a seeming total lack of motivation. Despite a pretty violent break in attempt, police say that Pace does not appear to have stolen anything or caused any damage to the museum’s exhibits.
Police say that Pace forced his way in the museum through an exterior door. A fire alarm was then activated inside the Nature Research Center shortly after 3:30 in the morning. Security camera footage shows Pace, wearing a white jacket and dark clothing, using a nearby fire extinguisher to bust down the door to the museum.
A museum spokesperson says that Pace used the fire extinguisher to knock off a door handle and then to break through some glass. Pace also turned on a water hose valve that caused minor water damage to some nearby doors. Despite the damage to the doors, the museum spokesperson says that nothing was stolen and that none of the exhibits in the museum appear to have been impacted in any way.
Police say that the break-in appears to be random and that Pace has yet to offer any possible motivation for the crime. Pace recently graduated from North Carolina State University where he majored in engineering. According to reports Pace was charged with misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering and damage to property. He has already been booked and released from jail on a $1,500 bond and is scheduled to appear in court again on October 15th.
According to authorities, Bader was at her home late Monday night when her roommate and his brother were in the living room, drinking and watching a loop of classic rock songs by the Eagles on the television. Bader apparently grew weary of hearing “Hotel California” blasted over and over again and told the two men to turn off the music.
Prior to passage of the law, students were only allowed to have an attorney informally advise them. Lawyers were generally barred from presenting evidence during the hearings, cross-examining witnesses or in any way representing the student during the disciplinary actions.
Experts say that detectives have begun cracking cases thanks to the technology that links mug shots with pictures pulled off of various social networking websites. Beyond just social networking sites, the facial recognition unit also combs pictures collected from a vast network of surveillance cameras.
The Stand Your Ground law in Florida became a critical component of the recent trial of George Zimmerman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February of 2012. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the teen, but argued that he acted in self-defense and should be exempt from prosecution under the state’s Stand Your Ground law. Since his acquittal, many have wondered whether similar arguments could be made if the incident had happened in North Carolina rather than Florida. Though the two states’ laws are not identical, they are very close and the result may have turned out much the same.
The state Supreme Court issued a ruling on the matter this week and found that such lab tests can stand on their own if cited by an expert witness offering an independent opinion. Other have argued that this conclusion is incorrect and that a lab test should face the same amount of scrutiny that a person would face and that means the analyst who conducted the test should be required to testify at trial.
Federal prosecutors say the leader of the fake prescription ring, Joshua Balkind, is already in prison serving a 20-year term. The other two participants were sentenced to 70 months in prison this Wednesday. Officials say the scheme worked by having Balkind make fake prescriptions using software on his home computer. He would then give the fake oxycodone prescriptions to drug addicts like Rhodes and DeYoung and essentially split the take, giving the addicts several pills and taking the rest to sell on the streets at a steep markup.
The case, Peugh v. United States, concerned a man who committed bank fraud back in the late 1990s. It took a long time for his case to be tried and for a sentence to be handed down, more than 11 years in fact. By 2010, a new round of sentencing guidelines had been issued which contained a suggested sentencing range of between 70 and 87 months for Peugh’s crime. The issue was that at the time the crimes were perpetrated, the sentencing range was dramatically more lenient, only 30 to 37 months. The judge who heard the case ultimately chose a 70-month sentence, something that many believed was clearly influenced by the new guidelines.
The arrests were the result of a four-year undercover investigation into illegal hunting practices known as Operation Something Bruin. Officers with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the U.S. Forest Service worked together using social media to infiltrate poaching circles and record legal violations. The investigators created fake social media profiles and found out about illegal organized hunts on federal land.
The case involves a horrible 1992 Texas double murder case where the suspect voluntarily answered police questions for nearly an hour. However, as the police asked more incriminating questions about shotgun shells found at the scene, the suspect stopped talking. Prosecutors later used Salinas’ silence against him and portrayed it as evidence of his guilt. The strategy worked like a charm for prosecutors and Salinas was found guilty.