A unanimous three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s decision to seal search warrants and other documents associated with the investigation of the the high-profile Nancy Cooper murder case in Cary. WRAL and The News & Observer had challenged the court order. (The documents in question have been released since the media outlets filed suit, but the appellate judges decided to address the larger issue of whether search warrants are public records that cannot be sealed.)
In other rulings issued this morning, the Court of Appeals:
- split 2-1 in upholding satellite-based monitoring of a convicted sex offender as a constitutional practice, rather than an unconstitutional ex post facto punishment.
- affirmed the dismissal of a tenured N.C. State faculty member (issuing an opinion that demonstrates the difficulty of getting rid of a tenured employee).
- affirmed a lower court ruling against the N.C. Department of Revenue, which had contested a company’s pursuit of a sales tax exemption for packaging materials it used to ship goods to customers.
- affirmed in a 2-1 decision a ruling that forces SAS to pay North Carolina tax on a plane that spent most of the 2003 tax year in Delaware, rather than North Carolina.
- reversed a lower court ruling that blocked residents of Tryon from challenging a rezoning connected to the local country club.
- affirmed punitive damages in a case involving a woman who was mistakenly served cleaning chemicals in her water at a Winston-Salem O’Charley’s restaurant.
