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Because of his prior South Carolina convictions, defendant was sentenced as a career offender. One of those convictions was under a South Carolina statute that encompasses both simple possession and more serious drug offenses; nevertheless, defendant’s sentencing sheet shows that he pled guilty to possession “w.i.t.d.” or possession with intent to distribute, which counts as ...

A sheriff’s sergeant stopped defendant’s BMW while attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Christopher Smith. The fact that Smith was not in the car did not make the stop unreasonable given the facts available to the sergeant at the time: (1) during a routine patrol, the sergeant observed Smith on the front porch of ...

Even if we assume, as defendant argues, that he was subjected to a de facto arrest rather than an investigatory stop when officers blocked his car at a gas station, the officers had received information about defendant’s drug sales from multiple sources and corroborated the sources’ information through their own surveillance of defendant. The officers ...

Before assigning defendant a prior record level point for his South Carolina manslaughter conviction, the trial court (1) heard the state read the text of the South Carolina statute – but not the statute number – and North Carolina’s charging language; (2) reviewed a document that was handed up by the state but is not ...

Defendant appeals from his superior court conviction of misdemeanor impaired driving. Original jurisdiction over this matter lay in the district court, but the record on appeal does not indicate how this misdemeanor case came before the superior court for trial. Consequently, we are unable to determine whether the superior court had subject matter jurisdiction. Appeal ...