Issue

Motion to suppress—warrant—information in accompanying affidavit sufficient

Summary

In a prosecution on numerous charges–arising from the theft of, among other items, cash, cigarettes, and lottery tickets from a market–the trial court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence discovered during the execution of a search warrant for his vehicle where, even disregarding the information obtained during a "knock-and-talk" that defendant challenged as unconstitutional, the affidavit accompanying the warrant application contained information supporting a fair probability that contraband would be discovered in the vehicle, including: security video footage showing a vehicle transporting a woman to and from a convenience store where she unsuccessfully attempted to redeem one of the stolen lottery tickets, an officer responding to the store's alert spotted a similar vehicle in a driveway, and the officer determining that the vehicle (eventually determined to be registered to defendant) had a fictitious license plate, a ploy known in the officer's experience to be used by criminals to avoid identification by law enforcement.

Summary from the North Carolina Reports digest (official subject index). Read the opinion →