A UNC School of Government Blog
Jeff Welty 
The other day I posted my thoughts about the “Jacob Wetterling” provision in G.S. 14-208.12A. While that provision raises what I think are the most difficult questions related to petitions to terminate sex offender registration, they are by no means the only questions. Here are some others (along with my best attempt to answer them, … Read more
by School of Government faculty members Jamie Markham and Shea Denning The folks at DOC combined records tell us they see a lot of habitual impaired driving judgments that look like this: 15 – 18 months, suspended, with an intermediate condition of special probation (i.e., a split sentence) requiring an active term of 12 months … Read more
Although I have a couple of more scholarly posts ready to go, there have been enough intriguing news stories over the past several days that I couldn’t resist doing another news roundup. First, returning to a topic I blogged about here, a Texas inmate has just been convicted of having a cell phone in prison … Read more
Several developments this week week have brought North Carolina much closer to resuming executions. The last execution in the state took place in August 2006. Since then, we’ve had a de facto moratorium, because of three related pieces of litigation. First, defense lawyers argued that lethal injection was a cruel and unusual method of execution. … Read more
Most readers of this blog know (1) that a search done pursuant to consent doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment, but (2) that the scope of search is limited by the terms of the consent. Thus, if Ollie Officer asks Sam Suspect whether he can search Sam’s house for the body of Vickie Victim, and Sam … Read more
Several stories of interest to readers of this blog have appeared over the last several days. First, the Winston-Salem Journal, in an editorial available here, is asking the General Assembly to take a close look at the death penalty, and to impose a moratorium while it does so. Of course, as the editorial notes, we … Read more
An interesting article in the New York Times, available here, talks about the increasing use of GPS tracking in domestic violence cases, either as a condition of pretrial release or as part of a probationary sentence. The story indicates that twelve states have passed legislation designed to enable the use of GPS in such cases. … Read more
Last term, the United States Supreme Court decided Rothgery v. Gillespie County, available here. As most folks likely know, before Rothgery, North Carolina law held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel “attached” when the defendant had his first appearance before a district court judge. After Rothgery, it’s clear that the right attaches at … Read more
Once again, my interest in criminal law and my interest in technology have come together in a brewing legal controversy. The issue is whether a DWI defendant who has submitted to a breath test for alcohol has a right to access the “source code” of the breath analysis machine. The Minnesota Supreme Court, in State … Read more
I was thinking about making today’s post a news roundup, since there’s been so much interesting criminal law news recently, including a rumor suggesting that Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson could be under consideration to replace Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court. (More information about that here.) But those plans were blown out of … Read more