Recent blog posts

The big news of the week was the election, with most media coverage focused on the change to the balance of power in Congress. This is not a political blog, […]

There are over 200 available beds at the DART Center. No wait. Today’s post talks about that and other things we learned on a recent visit to Goldsboro. Last week, […]

In September, the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission published the Driving While Impaired Convictions Statistical Report for Fiscal Year 2025 (hereinafter “the report”). The report provided detailed information […]

In a previous post, I wrote about the different types of sureties on a bail bond. As a quick recap, a surety is one who, along with the defendant, is […]

James Comey is back in the news. The United States Department of Justice has filed a criminal information against the former Director of the FBI accusing him of revealing sensitive […]

It is election season, so anything related to voting is big news. WRAL reports here that “[f]ederal prosecutors are accusing 18 people of being immigrants who illegally voted in North […]

In 2024, the United States Sentencing Commission amended the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to restrict the use of acquitted conduct. Under new U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(c), relevant conduct “does not include conduct […]

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions released by the Supreme Court of North Carolina on October 23, 2026. A defendant who fled before sentencing violated an implied condition of […]

Can court records of juvenile delinquency adjudications be used to determine conditions of pretrial release in criminal cases? This question has come up more frequently since the requirement to consider […]

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on October 21, 2026. The trial court did not plainly err in admitting two statements […]