suspended execution of sentence

After a jury trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, petitioner was convicted of violating a 1917 statute which prohibits any person from “knowingly and willfully . . . [making] any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States . . . .” The incident which led to petitioner’s arrest occurred on August 27, 1966, during a public rally on the Washington Monument grounds. The crowd present broke up into small discussion groups and petitioner joined a gathering scheduled to discuss police brutality. Most of those in the group were quite young, either in their teens or early twenties. Petitioner, who himself was 18 years old, entered into the discussion after one member of the group suggested that the young people present should get more education before expressing their views. According to an investigator for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps who was present, petitioner responded: “They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.” “They are not going to make me kill my black brothers.” At the close of the Government’s case, petitioner’s trial counsel moved for a judgment of acquittal. He contended that there was “absolutely no evidence on the basis of which the jury would be entitled to find that [petitioner] made a threat against the life of the President.” He stressed the fact that petitioner’s statement was made during a political debate, that it was expressly made conditional upon an event — induction into the Armed Forces — which petitioner vowed would never occur, and that both petitioner and the crowd laughed after the statement was made. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed by a two-to-one vote. The Supreme Court granted the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari.

In the early morning hours, a Missouri police officer on highway patrol stopped Tyler McNeely’s truck at approximately 2:08 a.m. after observing it exceed the posted speed limit and repeatedly cross the centerline. The officer noticed several signs that McNeely was intoxicated, including bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and the smell of alcohol on his breath. McNeely acknowledged that he had consumed a couple of beers at a bar, appeared unsteady on his feet when he exited the truck, and performed poorly on a battery of field-sobriety tests before declining to use a portable breath-test device. The officer placed McNeely under arrest and began transporting him to the station house. When McNeely indicated that he would again refuse to provide a breath sample, the officer changed course and took him to a nearby hospital for blood testing without attempting to secure a warrant. Upon arrival at the hospital, the officer read McNeely a standard implied consent form explaining that refusal to submit voluntarily to the test would lead to immediate revocation of his driver’s license for one year and could be used against him in a future prosecution under Missouri law. McNeely nonetheless refused consent. The officer then directed a hospital lab technician to take a blood sample, which was secured at approximately 2:35 a.m. Subsequent laboratory testing measured McNeely’s blood alcohol concentration at 0.154 percent. McNeely was charged with driving while intoxicated. He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court granted the motion to suppress, concluding that the exigency exception did not apply because, apart from the natural dissipation of blood alcohol, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency in which he could not practicably obtain a warrant. The Missouri Court of Appeals stated an intention to reverse but transferred the case directly to the Missouri Supreme Court, which affirmed the suppression order. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari.

In August 1981 a street fight occurred on the south side of Chicago during which Jack Bridges was stabbed in the back. Kevin Taylor was charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery arising from that incident. The State’s evidence at trial included testimony from Bridges, his brother, and three other witnesses who described a twenty-minute argument earlier in the evening and a later violent encounter in which Taylor allegedly stabbed Bridges and fired a gun at him. Well in advance of trial the prosecutor filed a discovery motion requesting a list of all defense witnesses. Taylor’s original response identified two sisters who later testified and two men who did not testify. On the first day of trial the defense was permitted to amend its answer by adding the names of Derrick Travis and a Chicago police officer, neither of whom ultimately testified. On the second day of trial, after the prosecution’s two principal witnesses had completed their testimony, defense counsel made an oral motion to amend the answer to discovery by adding Alfred Wormley and Pam Berkhalter. Counsel represented that he had just been informed about the witnesses and that they had probably seen the entire incident. The trial judge expressed concern that witnesses were being found that really were not there and directed counsel to produce them the next day. The following morning Wormley appeared and testified outside the presence of the jury. He stated that before the incident he saw Bridges and his brother with two guns wrapped in a blanket, heard them say they were after Taylor, and later warned Taylor to watch out. On cross-examination Wormley acknowledged that he had first met Taylor about four months earlier, more than two years after the incident, and that defense counsel had visited him at his home the week before trial. The judge found a blatant and willful discovery violation, expressed doubt about Wormley’s veracity, and excluded the testimony. Taylor was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated battery and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed, finding that counsel had acted in bad faith and that exclusion was a proper sanction. The Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the Compulsory Process Clause had been violated.

In 2012 Austin Lynn Miller was convicted of one count of possession of a methamphetamine precursor and one count of maintaining a vehicle or dwelling for sale or delivery of a controlled substance. The trial court imposed a suspended sentence of 16 to 20 months and placed him on 36 months of supervised probation. Effective 1 January 2012 the General Assembly enacted N.C. Gen. Stat. § 90-113.52A, which required retailers to submit purchaser information for pseudoephedrine products to the National Precursor Log Exchange system before completing any sale and to generate stop-sale alerts when quantity limits would be exceeded. Effective 1 December 2013 the legislature added subsection (c) to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 90-95(d1)(1), making it unlawful for any person previously convicted of possession or manufacture of methamphetamine to possess a pseudoephedrine product and classifying any violation as a Class H felony. On 7 January 2014 Miller purchased one 3.6-gram box of allergy and congestion relief medicine containing pseudoephedrine from the Boone Walmart. The transaction was recorded in the NPLEx system and no stop-sale alert was issued. Detective John Hollar of the Watauga County Sheriff's Office reviewed the weekend NPLEx logs, identified Miller's purchase, visited the store, and obtained a receipt bearing Miller's electronic signature even though the surveillance video system had not functioned. On 23 January 2014 Hollar obtained an arrest warrant that he served on Miller at his probation officer's office the following day. On 4 August 2014 Miller was indicted under the new subsection. On 4 February 2015 he filed a motion to declare the statute unconstitutional as applied to him. The case was tried at the 2 February 2015 criminal session of Watauga County Superior Court before Judge Eric C. Morgan. After a pretrial hearing at which the State compared the statute to the felony-firearm possession law, the trial court denied the motion. The State presented testimony from Detective Hollar and the Walmart pharmacy manager. The court denied Miller's motion to dismiss at the close of the State's evidence. The jury returned a guilty verdict, and the court imposed a suspended sentence of 6 to 17 months together with 24 months of supervised probation. Miller indicated at sentencing that he wished to appeal but did not give oral notice after entry of judgment or file written notice within fourteen days as required by N.C. R. App. P. 4(a). On 5 June 2015 Miller filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. The State filed a response acknowledging the court's discretion to grant the petition. By order entered 24 June 2015 the petition was referred to the panel, which allowed it and addressed the merits of the appeal.