A UNC School of Government Blog
Shea Denning Among the opinions filed by the North Carolina Supreme Court last Friday was an order captioned “In the Matter of District Court Administrative Order.” Without providing any factual background regarding the order, the court vacated in “each and every respect” an administrative order entered April 25, 2011 by “Judge Jerry A. Jolly in District Court, … Read more
Misdemeanor death by vehicle is defined in G.S. 20-141.4(a2) as (1) unintentionally causing the death of another person (2) while violating a State law or local ordinance applying to the operation or use of a vehicle or to the regulation of traffic—other than impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1—where (3) commission of the offense is the … Read more
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. To commemorate the occasion, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air broadcast this interview with Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander argues that the mass incarceration of African-Americans in the war on drugs strips such … Read more
Part I of this post ended by noting that, like the racing forfeiture provisions in G.S. 20-141.3—and unlike the DWI seizure and forfeiture laws—the new felony speeding to elude seizure and forfeiture provisions in G.S. 20-141.5 fail to specify that payment of towing and storage costs is required to obtain the release of a motor … Read more
My nomination for catchiest short title of the 2011 legislative session goes to House Bill 427, enrolled and chaptered as S.L. 2011-271, and short-titled “Run and You’re Done.” The aptly captioned act provides for seizure and forfeiture of motor vehicles driven on or after December 1, 2011 in the commission of felony speeding to elude, … Read more
Several earlier posts (here, here, here and here) and this article discuss the North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling in State v. Ward, 364 N.C. 133 (2010), that the identification of a controlled substance based upon mere visual inspection is insufficiently reliable to serve as the basis for an expert’s opinion pursuant to Rule 702 of … Read more
Suppose a person who speaks only Spanish is stopped on suspicion of impaired driving by two officers, Officer A and Officer B. Officer A speaks and understands only English. Officer B is fluent in English and Spanish. Officer B asks the defendant if he has been drinking. The defendant states, in Spanish, that he drank … Read more
At the start of the fall semester, the Daily Tar Heel reported that Chapel Hill and Carrboro police officers have combined forces with UNC campus police in an effort to ramp up enforcement of laws prohibiting underage drinking. The article states that undercover operations are among the tactics employed by the town’s Alcohol Law Enforcement … Read more
The Structured Sentencing Act permits judges to consolidate convictions for multiple felony offenses entered at the same time or multiple misdemeanor offenses entered in the same session of court and to impose a single judgment that is consistent with the punishment required for the most serious of the consolidated offenses based on the defendant’s prior … Read more
As most readers of this blog know, many people charged in North Carolina with driving while impaired and other implied consent offenses suffer the immediate consequence of having their driver’s licenses revoked pursuant to G.S. 20-16.5 by the magistrate at their initial appearance. North Carolina enacted its administrative license revocation procedure as part of the … Read more