Episode 4: NC Criminal Debrief

[00:00:00.925] [UNKNOWN] Bye.
[00:00:12.990] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome, everyone, to the North Carolina Criminal Debrief. This is a podcast devoted to covering criminal law developments in North Carolina and beyond. I'm your host, Phil Dixon, the defender educator and a faculty member here at the UNC School of Government, coming to you from the School of Government studio here in lovely Chapel Hill. It's the middle of September. The students are back and campus is bustling. Today is episode four of our podcast. Lots of developments since our last episode. Perhaps the most significant criminal law news since we last broadcast was the FBI raid on former President Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago. My colleague Jeff Welty did a good blog post about public access to search warrants in the wake of that raid. I encourage folks to check that out. That's at the North Carolina Criminal Law blog. To that point, a lot of the information concerning the justifications for that raid has since come out, with the feds alleging that highly sensitive national security documents and top secret information was improperly removed from the White House and kept relatively unsecured at Mar-a-Lago. If true, this is problematic for several criminal law reasons, including federal criminal charges relating to the removal, concealment, or destruction of papers of the United States, violations of the Presidential Records Act, espionage-related offenses concerning moving or mishandling national security information, and potentially obstruction of justice. The search warrant is out there. A redacted version of the affidavit supporting the search warrant is out there. Additional photographs and information have been released in response to the motion for a special master to be appointed to review. So that's the latest. A federal district court judge in Florida, a Trump appointee, has appointed a special master to review the documents for any irrelevant or privileged information that the FBI may have seized. and they've ordered the Department of Justice to cease its criminal investigation while this occurs. Now, that's worth noting. Of course, this is an unprecedented type of search and seizure by the feds, but it's also pretty unprecedented that a district court judge would step in and order a federal agency to cease a criminal investigation. I cannot recall any other similar order for the FBI or any other investigatory agency. And I think it's noteworthy that this was ordered despite the fact that the feds conducted this raid and search already having a taint team in place. A taint team is sort of what they would use if they were raiding a lawyer's law firm. With that taint team, one team comes in, reviews the documents for privileged information, removes anything that might be irrelevant or privileged and then another different team of investigators who doesn't speak to the initial taint team actually conducts its investigation of the relevant documents. All politics aside, I've read this affidavit, or at least the parts the public is allowed to. I've viewed some of the photos of this evidence and looked at the relevant federal law. I don't think it looks very good as far as how this shakes out for the former president, but of course, again, it is an unprecedented situation. There's political considerations here as well as the criminal law ones. And we'll just have to see how that continues to develop. I will be keeping an eye on it, and we'll be sure to update you here as it goes along. Most commentators are speculating that the feds are unlikely to take any major additional steps in this investigation prior to the November election. Sticking with federal law for a moment longer, the U.S. Supreme Court is about to start a new term in the next few weeks on October 3rd. I do not see a ton of significant criminal law cases on the docket. The real biggies, as far as I can tell, are mostly politically charged cases. Both Harvard and our very own UNC have big Title IX equal protection and affirmative action cases before the court, all dealing with the use of race as a factor in college admissions. There's also the big Moore v. Harper case. That's a case by the North Carolina state legislators challenging the state's state Supreme Court's ability and authority to regulate elections. This is under the so-called independent state legislature doctrine. It's all interesting stuff. It's important stuff politically to keep an eye on, but not really criminal. So I'll just leave that at that. On August 18th, our North Carolina State Supreme Court released some opinions. Nothing too significant, but I did want to flag a couple of the opinions for our listeners. First, we have State v. Jones. My colleague Jamie Markham just published a blog about that on the Criminal Law blog. Check it out if you'd like. This deals with the right to confrontation, the right to confront witnesses and cross-examine them at a probation violation hearing. So, of course, lawyers and judges that may be listening know that there is a Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine and confront in person one's accusers under most circumstances. That's to face the witnesses against you at your trial in person and question them. But that's a trial right, and probation court is not a trial. The case law is clear that the standards are just different in probation once the person's already been found guilty. So that constitutional Sixth Amendment right does not apply at the probation violation stage. But we have a statutory right to confront at probation, and that's based on 15A.1345 subsection E. That provision says that the defendant is entitled to confront witnesses at a probation violation hearing unless the court finds good cause to not allow confrontation. Here, the defendant was alleged to have violated his probation by committing a new crime, possession of firearm by a felon. Now, in that firearm by felon prosecution, the defendant files a motion to suppress and argues, you know, the search was bad, the gun should have been thrown out. He loses that motion. It's denied by the trial court. But later, at this probation violation hearing, the state introduces that court order denying the motion to suppress from the criminal case. The state does this at probation over the defendant's objection. They said, this is irrelevant. They shouldn't be allowed to use this order. But the trial court allowed it, and neither the defendant nor the state called any of the officers involved in the defendant's arrest for that firearm. They just relied on a transcript of the suppression hearing and the order that the trial court entered denying the suppression motion. Trial court at probation then uses that information, finds that the defendant has likely committed this new criminal offense, finds him in violation, and revokes his probation. So the defendant appeals, arguing, this violated my statutory right to confrontation. You know, we objected, I had a right under the statute, no fair. The Supreme Court disagreed while, or at least a majority of the Supreme Court disagreed. While the defendant did lodge a general objection to the use of the suppression order, he never specifically raised confrontation. This general objection was not good enough to preserve any confrontation argument or issue for appeal. And therefore, because it wasn't raised, the trial court did not err by failing to make that good cause determination. They said there's no need for the trial court to find good cause to disallow confrontation where it's not specifically requested by the defendant. So your takeaway there is, I mean, one, for defenders, object to any hearsay or potential confrontation clause problems at a probation violation hearing and specifically demand confrontation of the witnesses in person pursuant to 15A, 1345E. If you just object, that's not gonna be good enough. If you object and cite the statute and name your confrontation rights as the issue, that'll at least get it reviewed on appeal. As we're gonna see in some other cases coming up, I don't know if I'll get to them today or at our next episode, but the Appellate Division too has just been killing defendants on appeals left and right on preservation grounds all around. Defenders, you really have to object to everything on all possible grounds and specifically state those grounds and then object again at trial or object again at the end of the charge conference. I'm sort of planning to do either a whole show on the very technical fund preservation requirements in the state, possibly a blog post too. But I would just note that this is something that's been coming up a lot lately. It's an accelerating trend, and the burden is really on the defendant and the defense to avoid waiver by failure to preserve. Turning to another North Carolina Supreme Court case, this is State v. Gaddis, G-A-D-D-I-S. This looks at when and whether the defendant is entitled to a transcript of a prior hearing or trial. Now of course, if the defendant's able to afford a transcript, they just go order it from the court reporter and pay for it and they get a copy. Larger transcripts can be expensive though. I remember I tried, I think it was my very first jury trial was a self-defense stabbing case. It ultimately hung seven to five. The court ordered a mistrial and we put it right back on for a new trial. And that was one of the steps in the process was to get a transcript of that first trial. It can take quite some time for the transcript to be prepared and in our case I think we had four days effectively of recorded trial proceedings. I want to say the transcript was in the thousands of pages. But in any event, an indigent or a partially indigent defendant, that is somebody who maybe had the money to hire a lawyer but no longer has the money to spend things on things like experts or a transcript in this case, they have a conditional right to a free transcript, a transcript at the state's expense. Under a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case called Britt v. North Carolina, the trial court is to examine the value of the transcript to the defendant in the case and the availability of any other alternatives that would basically accomplish the same purpose. That's the standard, this two-pronged test of whether an indigent defendant is entitled to a transcript. So it can be reversible error not to supply the defendant a transcript when it was necessary for the defendant's effective defense of the case or for his appeal of the case. And the appeal note strikes me a little funny. I think as a matter of course, indigent defendants are provided a transcript on direct appeal these days. But in any event, you commonly want one like in the situation I just described after a mistrial or just where there's been substantial sworn testimony at pretrial hearings like in a suppression. Say there's an extended suppression hearing, lots of officers are testifying under oath, there's probably value in having a transcript of what that sworn testimony was just in case there's any discrepancies or inconsistencies with their later testimony at trial. That was the case here. The defendant was on trial for DWI and some related offenses. First go around, jury hangs 11 to 1. Trial court declares a mistrial, so do over. New counsel is appointed. Five weeks after defense counsel, the new defense counsel is appointed, but only one week before the new trial date, defense counsel makes a motion for the transcript of the first trial. And he also asked to continue the case. The trial court just summarily denies those motions. No discussion, no analysis, just no. The defendant renews his motions at the start of trial. They're again denied, and this time the defendant is convicted at trial. Unsurprisingly, I think, they had a blood alcohol content of .12. They convicted on everything. The Court of Appeals affirmed and didn't have any problem with this denial of the transcripts, and so does the North Carolina Supreme Court ultimately. The argument was, hey, this violated my due process rights to sort of prepare for my defense and present my defense, and it violates equal protection principles under the 14th Amendment. If I was a wealthy defendant, I would have just been able to get this, and I could have used it for impeachment. But because I'm indigent, I'm really being discriminated against effectively on the basis of poverty. That was the argument. And here's how the North Carolina Supreme Court looked at it. They said, you know, the trial court erred here. It should have applied that two-factor BRIT test that we just talked about. What was the value of the transcript to the defendant? And what, if any, other alternatives were available that would accomplish the same thing? The trial court here did not do that, and that was wrong. But this error was harmless on the facts of the case. There was overwhelming evidence of guilt, pointing to that relatively high BAC. And the defendant's argument here was really that, well, it would have helped me impeach these witnesses. There was a couple of witnesses IDing him, identifying him as the driver of the car, and he thought that There was going to be some inconsistencies with their testimony between the first and second trial, so he wanted their testimony from the first trial in front of him so they could be impeached with it. But the defendant was also on video admitting to driving at the scene. And the trial court let the defendant call his prior trial counsel to help impeach one of those identification witnesses. But the other identification witness, there were no inconsistencies with his testimony. So the court said, error, you know, this is not how you're supposed to handle a request for transcript, but didn't actually hurt the defendant here. So it's not reversible error, it's harmless error. A couple of thoughts on this, although not specifically relied on. I mean, there's some discussion of this, but it's not a part of the holding. But I think part of the decision implicitly is the timing of this request. I think that probably hurt the defendant's chances both at the trial court level and on appeal. Remember, he made this request for the transcript only five days before the trial. I've never known a court reporter who can prepare a transcript that quickly. Usually they're backlogged and it really takes some time, especially depending on how long the transcript is. So, you know, in part it would have necessitated a continuance in all likelihood and that's what the defendant was asking for. I want the transcript and I'm going to need a continuance. But all that being done five days before trial is a little tight. That's a pretty quick turnaround. So I think one, it really would be a different result if four weeks before trial the defendant made this motion. To be clear, or to be fair, defense counsel had only had this case for five weeks. In the scope of criminal representation in superior court, that is not a long time, and I can't say I really fault defense counsel too much here for that. But for what it's worth, make this request as early as possible in the process. When you do so, argue those same constitutional bases that were raised here. It goes to your due process right to prepare and to present a defense. And there's equal protection issues implicated by this. Articulate how that transcript is valuable to the defense. And I think, generally speaking, it's always going to be valuable, and it's always going to have impeachment value. I think this is a bit of an outlier in terms of practice. I mean, the defendant, in my experience, usually gets this motion granted. I was never once turned down on a request for a transcript for an indigent defendant, and my strong sense is that most judges grant this kind of motion liberally. at least when it's timely made, not if it's being raised the day of trial or the Friday before, or even like here, five days before trial. That may be cutting it a little too close. But when you really think about that BRIT test, it seems pretty easy to meet. Again, it almost always has impeachment value for the defendant's case. I don't really even understand the whole, is there a sufficient alternative? I mean, there's not. There's just not going to be that many sufficient alternatives to the actual transcript of the proceedings. Unless somebody has made some other recording of it, perhaps if it's been filmed by the media. But the only other alternatives would be to call witnesses who are depending on their memory to restate what they recorded. heard at the first proceeding. So I think generally the defense can meet that standard that it's important and that there's not a sufficient alternative. So don't hesitate to make this motion whenever it's helpful. Just remember to try and do so as early as possible in the case. All right, let's turn to some court of appeals cases. Joiner, State v. Joiner was decided on August 2nd, and this is a pretty important confrontation clause case. So we're going right back to confrontation, just like we had in that Supreme Court case, but this is the trial right that we're talking about. So we're in Sixth Amendment territory again. This case comes to us from Jones County. It involves elder exploitation. This is a familiar scheme, I think, to many criminal... system actors where a defendant approaches some elderly homeowner, tells them that he's noticed they need work done on their home, they'll bill them, they'll get paid for the work, and then they either don't do the work, or they don't do the work that they promised to, or the work wasn't really needed in the first place. And that was the situation here, sort of. fraud on the elderly by saying, you know, let me fix your roof. And the roof didn't need fixing. You always see a ton of these cases after the floods and hurricanes down east, or at least that was my experience. Here it was an 88-year-old victim, and she got duped into paying the defendant a lot of money over these false allegations that her home needed work. So he's indicted for these charges, and after he's indicted, the woman goes and obtains a 50C no contact order. That's basically a restraining order for situations not involving domestic violence. You've got your 50Bs for domestic violence, your 50Cs are for harassment or unlawful sexual conduct, and I think maybe some other reasons, but it's your non-domestic restraining order. So the defendant gets notice, hey, we're going to have a hearing on this motion for a 50C protective order. and the defendant does not show up to the court for that hearing, so the hearing is held in his absence, the woman testifies, and the 50c order is granted. Between that 50c hearing and trial, the woman dies, so she's no longer available to testify at court. Over the defense objections, her testimony from the 50c hearing was admitted at the criminal trial. Now, how is that? Remember, the rule for admission of testimonial evidence without the physical presence of the witness, it's only okay if the defendant had a prior motive and opportunity to cross-examine that now unavailable witness. This is clear. We have case law in North Carolina already where, say, for instance, it's like a probable cause hearing. So probable cause hearing is held. The defendant is there. He asked some questions of the witness. Then come trial, the witness is no longer available. That testimony from the probable cause hearing may be fair game. And I think the case that I'm thinking of, it was considered fair game. And perhaps the defendant can quibble, it wasn't quite the same issues, or I didn't quite have the same motivation, but so far I think our courts are taking a pretty liberal view of this prong of prior motive and opportunity to cross. If you could have done it and just didn't, or you only did some of your questions but not all of them, that prior opportunity and motive is met. Well, this case expands that. At the prior case, it was a PC hearing and the defendant was present. Here, the defendant was not present at the hearing. So the court said, basically, you had a chance to cross at that hearing. Now the witness is unavailable. That was your chance. No problem, basically, says the Court of Appeals, despite the fact you weren't even at the 50C hearing. Because you could have showed up, you could have crossed the witness, you would have had the same motive and opportunity because the hearing involved the same issues. It was on the fraud, basically. and asking the guy to stay away. So we're gonna find that standard was met here. No problem with the confrontation clause and the admission of this testimony by the deceased victim. So, and ultimately convictions affirmed. But I have some questions about this. I'm not sure I've seen it count where, as I said, where the defendant wasn't even at the hearing at all. And so for, you know, one thing, it may be a different result where the defendant did not get notice of the hearing. But I question the court's logic here a little bit. They basically say the defendant implicitly or impliedly waived his confrontation clause rights by not showing up. And they cite to a recent Supreme Court case, a U.S. Supreme Court case, Hemphill v. New York. Now that case dealt with the admission of a plea transcript over the defendant's objection without the witness present. and really dealt with a New York rule of evidence that's not particularly relevant to here. I don't think we've spent a ton of time on Hemphill because it's not that pertinent to North Carolina law as far as I can tell. But it is a case discussing confrontation clause principles. It's a very interesting case. I encourage readers to read it. But what I find fascinating is they cite here, this Joiner Court, doesn't cite to any majority opinion in Hemphill. It cites to Alito and Kavanaugh's concurrences. And those two judges, it was Alito writing for the concurrence there, wrote separately to talk about this implied waiver stuff. Well, that is nowhere in the majority opinion in Hemphill. That was a Sotomayor decision. Sotomayor authored the majority opinion, if I recall. But Alito writes separately to say, hey, there's tons of ways of impliedly waiving your rights. And I'm not sure I agree with Alito or the Joyner Court in that regard. I mean, what we know is that you can forfeit your confrontation clause rights certainly by being so disruptive in the courtroom that the proceedings can't go forward. That's one way. The other biggie is if you can forfeit your rights by wrongdoing. So if I've bribed the witness to not show up, if I killed the witness to make him not show up, I can forfeit my confrontation clause rights that way. And, as Alito points out in his concurrence in Hemphill, there's also the failure to comport with these notice and demand statutes. That's where the state gives the defendant notice, hey, we plan to admit this, say, lab analyst report without the analyst present. We're putting you on notice. And then it shifts to the defendant. The defendant has a certain period of time in which they can object. If they object, then the analyst has to show up in court. If they fail to object and fail to make a timely objection, they have waived their right to confrontation. But as far as majority opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court, those are the ways that it can be waived. There isn't this implicit waiver that Alito and Kavanaugh seem to agree on. I don't see any direct controlling precedent establishing this type of implied waiver, so I encourage defenders to push back on this a little bit if it comes up. It seems unsettled to me as a matter of federal constitutional law. But under Joyner, that's the rule in North Carolina now. If you've got the same issues in a civil case, the defendant doesn't show up, and then the witness is unavailable, you have waived your Confrontation Clause rights because you had a prior motive and opportunity to cross. I do advise on this quite a bit, and a lot of attorneys, a lot of defense attorneys, take the approach of, I don't want to conduct a probable cause hearing in district court on a felony, that preliminary hearing, that we don't always honor in North Carolina, but I know some districts have gotten much better at doing PC hearings. But a lot of defense attorneys would say, I don't want the PC hearing done. I'm going to waive probable cause exactly for this reason, because I don't want... the situation to happen where you know i got a chance to question this witness unrecorded in district court and then the witness isn't available in superior court and all of a sudden their testimony gets to come in but for that probable cause hearing that testimony would not be admissible in the superior court trial later so Something to think about, a strategic consideration when dealing with both not only these probable cause hearings, but also these kinds of related civil hearings like 50C proceedings, 50B proceedings, and the like. Sticking with Joyner for just a second, there is a cool little discussion of this weird statute, GS 1-149. Chapter 1. That statute bars the use of pleadings in a criminal case against the defendant as proof of any allegations or admissions in the pleading. That's a mouthful. What it says is that you can't use a pleading, like say the 50C complaint, to prove any issues of fact against the defendant at his criminal trial. So a couple things, it does not bar the defendant from using a criminal pleading for any purpose really, as far as I can tell. But it says you could use the pleading against the defendant to say, yes, see, he did the crime because it's in this other pleading. That's how the court has looked at this rule in the past. It does not bar all pleadings. It says you can't use them to prove the truth of the matter asserted that the defendant committed this crime. So the purpose of how it's being used, that's what matters when determining whether these pleadings are admissible or not. I had this come up in a recent consult and it took me, I knew that this statute was somewhere out there but I could not find it and it took me forever to find it in chapter one, the civil rules. But this came up in the Joyner case because they admitted the 50C complaint. And here the court said that wasn't a problem because it was merely being used to show that similar issues were discussed in both the 50C civil case and in the criminal case. and said that the pleading was not being used to establish the truth of the matter of the allegations of criminal activity. Furthermore, the defendant did not object to that use of the pleading at trial, so it's only being reviewed for plain error at best. So in that event, the court said even if it was used for the truth and improperly admitted, it didn't rise to the level of plain error. I just think that's a cool little reminder about a fairly obscure statute. and related evidence principles. So I think all sides can take note of that and remember you're going to have to show a particular purpose when admitting these pleadings from other matters against the defendant in a criminal case. Yet another aspect of the decision, the Joiner decision, deals with the right to inspect crime scene premises. I'm not going into that right now, but it is another aspect of the decision. It's important and folks may want to check it out, especially if that's coming up in your case for the defense where You know, you're seeking an order authorizing you to go inspect a crime scene of, you know, here it would have been the woman's home. So you probably did need a court order for that. He didn't get to do that here, and the court also affirmed that and said that was not a problem on these facts. I think the last one we're going to get to for today is a sexual assault case pickings. This deals with the trial penalty. Practitioners probably know what I mean when I say that. This is a child sex case, to be clear, and it's horrific allegations that I'm not going to go into. If you are having problems sleeping too much, go read the facts of this case and you might never ever sleep again. It is truly one of the more disturbing cases I've ever read. And that kind of says a lot. So, we've got a Wake County case. This involves sexual assault and first-degree rape charges of the chorus teacher at a school and an 11-year-old student victim. This stuff happened in the school bathrooms. Apparently he had done it before with other children at the school and the state presented several witnesses who had been similarly victimized by this defendant at the school and that was offered under Rule 404 of the Rules of Evidence to establish the defendant's intent and plan. That's half the opinion right there is that was this character evidence properly admitted? Was it improper character evidence just used to show that the defendant's a bad guy? That's improper. Or was it properly admitted to show the defendant's intent and plan, which is permitted under the rule? Unsurprisingly, I think to anyone that deals with these kind of cases or has taken a deep dive into 404 , the trial court allowed this evidence. It was pretty close in time and the allegations were remarkably similar, which is generally how you would evaluate that kind of evidence. And the Court of Appeals had no problem affirming it as well. So they cite to the fact that the case is talking about 404 is a rule of inclusion. At least in North Carolina, we're pretty liberal with 404 evidence. And we're especially liberal in admitting this kind of evidence in child sexual assault cases. So really, no problem there. CORE had no problem affirming the 404 issue. But the sentencing was a different story. I mentioned the trial penalty. Here's what I mean. At the conclusion of the trial, when they're conducting sentencing, the trial court makes these comments to the defendant. He said something along the lines of, Those children had to come in here and testify at court, and that was really difficult and likely re-traumatized them. You know what, defendant? Those children, they didn't have a choice about whether or not to come into court and testify. But you, you had a choice, sort of implying you could have chose to plead guilty and not go through this trial and not make these children come back to court and testify. He leaves out that latter part, but he does say, defendant, you had a choice and you effectively chose to force these children to court. And the trial court then proceeds to impose three consecutive sentences of 300 months each. That's 75 years for anybody counting. Now, considering how really grotesquely awful these facts are, I'm not sure he really doesn't get the same result either way or from a lot of different kinds of judges. But the court found that this was a violation of the defendant's right to a jury trial. You cannot punish the defendant for exercising his right to trial by imposing a harsher sentence. based on him going to trial. That's the trial penalty. And there's a lot of commentary out there about it. I think a lot of defense attorneys would tell you the trial penalty is a real thing in many cases. That's often the benefit of the bargain to take your plea, right? It's like, I know I'm only going to get this much time if I take my plea. Or you're explicitly negotiating for a lesser sentence or to a lesser charge. And, you know, if I go forward on trial, well, I'm facing more charges and I'm potentially facing aggravated factors. And, you know, I'll be in the judge's discretion instead of negotiating something. But when we do get to trial, it is improper. One, it's improper to threaten the defendant with a harsher sentence or higher charges just for exercising his right to trial. And the line gets fuzzy there in the context of plea bargaining, I think. But that's something for prosecutors to keep in mind, and it's something for judges to keep in mind. Basically, the court here said the trial court's comments did exactly that. They punished him. They indicated a clear inference that he was being punished more just because he decided not to plead guilty and instead to plead not guilty and go to trial. Now the opinion goes out of its way to note that the trial courts have the ultimate discretion always whether to impose consecutive or concurrent sentences. So it is entirely possible for the defendant to get the same sentence on remand. But this case is remanded for a new sentencing. I'm not sure what would help this guy. I don't know how old he is, but I think even if you knocked off 300 months of that 900 months, we're still talking about probably a life sentence or a de facto life sentence at least. So good reminder that this trial penalty stuff is unconstitutional. It shouldn't be used. It is typically hard to prove because of the discretion that the court has in sentencing. But, you know, if the quiet part is said out loud, hey, you know, I'm angry that you exercised your right to a trial, that'll get you there. I think that's basically what happened here. Again, it is tough because if it's a sentence that's authorized by law, I think that's really what it's going to probably take is some improper comments on the record reflecting this, at least creating an inference that this defendant is being wrongly punished for exercising his right to go to trial. But it reminded me of some experiences I had as a really young attorney when I was just starting out in Superior Court. I was a baby lawyer some time ago. I remember a judge, or I think more than one probably, we'd go in the back and we'd conference cases before we would go to trial or we would be conferencing them in an administrative setting, trying to figure out a plea or work out a plea and see what the judge is gonna do. And I've had judges say, I had judges say to me back in the day, you know, if your guy turns down this plea and goes to trial, I'm gonna hammer him. I'm gonna give him every day I can get him. At the time, you know, I was just sort of a go along, get along thing or sort of, well, that's how things are done. But, you know, from my position in the ivory tower now, I have the luxury and convenience of sitting around and thinking about these things and studying these kinds of principles. And, you know, I think that that's clearly improper now. And if that happened to me now, if a judge or prosecutor, for that matter, said to me in chambers or in the hallway, you know, I'm going to seek a higher punishment just based on the exercise of your guy's right to a trial, I would then be moving to Well, if it's a judge, I'd probably move to recuse them and I would recreate that for the record on the record in front of the court reporter. And certainly I would be objecting at sentencing if it seems like this is happening. And, you know, I think arguably that that stuff implicates ethical concerns as well, especially for the state. But Pickens, take my word for it. You don't wanna read the facts, but that's your summary of it. Good 4-4-B case for the state, good trial penalty case for the defense. That's it for today's episode. I wanna give a special thanks as always to Paul Bonner, our studio wizard extraordinaire here at the School of Government. Thanks too as always to Monica Yelverton, Associate Director of Programs and Trainings for our public defense education team. Thanks too to my brother David Dixon for composing our theme music. You can find him on Insta and Facebook at David Dixon Music. If you like what you hear on this podcast, please like, subscribe, and pass it along to your friends. If you have any questions, concerns, topics you'd like to see covered, you want to give me some feedback, please email me. I'd love to hear from listeners. Dixon at SOG.UNC.EDU. That is again D-I-X-O-N. at SOG.unc.edu. I really appreciate all the positive feedback I've gotten so far. I have had many people from judges to prosecutors to defense lawyers writing me and telling me they're enjoying the podcast. That's great for me to hear. It gives me encouragement to continue doing this stuff. I know it's been a little while since our last episode, so I'm going to try to get back on it and do some more soon. Thanks, everybody. I will talk to you again very soon.