This firm recently prevailed in a criminal case, State v. Michael Lamp, which involved a felon who was arrested for failing to register his address as required by law. The case went all the way to the N.C. Supreme Court, and Mr. Hayes appeared at oral arguments before the Court. Because of a COVID issue, the oral arguments were conducted remotely, and they were recorded and posted to the Court’s Youtube channel.
While the entire argument takes an hour, we draw your attention to Mr. Hayes’ closing argument, which you can view here. The legal arguments in the case were extensive and involved many technical questions of statutory interpretation. At its core, though, the case was about a very simple supposition — that Mr. Lamp had simply written down a wrong address by mistake. The legal arguments are absolutely necessary to support the claims on appeal, but judges are “just people” too. As this closing shows, sometimes it is important to cut through the legalese and to spell out a common sense theory for why your client should prevail.
The N.C. Supreme Court’s Youtube channel includes the full argument here