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Supreme Court of North Carolina· 12/21/2018

State v. Rankin

Citations

  • 821 S.E.2d 787
  • 371 N.C. 885

Syllabus

Whether subdivision (a)(1) of N.C.G.S. 14-399, which generally prohibits littering, is an essential element of, or creates an exception to, that offense whether an indictment that did not refer to the language in subdivision (a)(1) was fatally defective.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • discussing the “common law rule that a defective indictment deprives a criminal court of jurisdiction” interchangeably with the “common law remedy for invalid indictments”
  • explaining that “[t]he intent of the General Assembly may be found first from the plain language of the statute, then from the legislative history, the spirit of the act and what the act seeks to accomplish” (quoting State v. Langley, 817 S.E.2d 191, 196 (N.C. 2018))
  • “The indictment in this case failed to allege each element of the crime of littering, thereby depriving defendant of sufficient notice.”
  • “The goal of statutory interpretation is to determine the meaning that the legislature intended upon the statute’s enactment.”
  • “The goal of statutory interpretation is to determine the meaning that the legislature intended upon the statute’s enactment.”
  • “The law disfavors application of rigid and technical rules to indictments; so long as an indictment adequately expresses the charge against the defendant, it will not be quashed.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Beasley, Martin

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

46 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

28 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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