Mallett v. North Carolina

Background

A group of criminal defendants in North Carolina challenged several rulings after their trials. The State passed a law allowing appeals to the State Supreme Court after the trials were over. The defendants’ business ledgers had been seized under an attachment by the sheriff at the instigation of the prosecution’s witness and were used at trial over the defendants’ objections. The defendants later asked the State Supreme Court to reconsider and raised federal constitutional questions there.

Reasoning

The Court addressed three main questions: whether the new appeal law was a forbidden retroactive criminal law (an "ex post facto" rule), whether allowing appeals from one district but not another denied equal protection, and whether using the seized ledgers forced the defendants to be witnesses against themselves. Relying on earlier decisions, the Court said a law is ex post facto only if it makes innocent acts criminal, increases the punishment, or lowers the proof required for conviction. The appeal law did none of those things, so it was not retroactive in that sense. On equal protection, the Court explained a State may organize its appellate system differently across regions. On the ledgers, the State court treated the matter under state evidence rules and found the books were legally in another’s possession and thus admissible as business entries.

Real world impact

The ruling lets States change criminal appeal procedures without automatically creating a retroactivity violation, and it permits use of business records lawfully held by others as trial evidence. Because the federal questions were presented and decided by the State Supreme Court, the U.S. Court reviewed them but affirmed the State court’s conclusions. This decision affirms the conviction and leaves open the general ability of States to regulate trial and appeal procedures.