Issue

Appellate jurisdiction—petition for certiorari—order granting motion to suppress—no statutory mechanism for appeal to lower court

Summary

In a prosecution for driving while impaired, where the district court preliminarily granted defendant's motion to suppress evidence from his arrest; the State appealed that ruling to the superior court, which upheld the ruling; and then the district court entered a final suppression order per the superior court's instructions, the Supreme Court properly allowed the State's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the State's appeal from the final suppression order. The State's petition met the requirements for certiorari jurisdiction under Appellate Rule 21, where the district court's final order was interlocutory and where no right of appeal from that order existed because the State lacked a statutory basis to challenge it in the superior court.

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