Officers and NCAWARE

NCAWARE is an acronym for the North CArolina WArrant REpository. It is the computer system that is used by judicial officials, usually magistrates, to create criminal process documents such as arrest warrants and criminal summonses. The documents are stored permanently in the system, and can be viewed by anyone with access to the system. The … Read more

News Roundup

This will be the last post of 2011. I’m off next week and many of our readers are, too. It’s been a fantastic year on the blog. We rocketed past a million total hits and saw a massive increase in email subscriptions. I have been particularly happy to see a nice uptick in the number … Read more

News Roundup

Happy belated Bill of Rights Day! The end of the year is supposed to be slow, but this week has been completely full of criminal justice news. Among the major stories are the following: 1. In Raleigh, Governor Perdue vetoed the de facto repeal of the Racial Justice Act. Republicans have the votes to override … Read more

Use of Force Experts

A couple of months ago, the court of appeals decided State v. McDowell, __ N.C. App. __, 715 S.E.2d 602 (2011). The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder notwithstanding his claim of self-defense. A passage from the court’s opinion caught my eye: Dave Cloutier, an expert in use-of-force science and self-defense tactics, testified that, given … Read more

News Roundup

Charlotte’s got banking, Asheville’s got mountains, and Eastern North Carolina has the beach, but right now, the Triangle has criminal justice stories in spades. In Orange County, the taking of testimony has begun in the Laurence Lovette/Eve Carson trial. The News and Observer story here includes an interesting discussion of the feasibility of emergency PINs … Read more

The Law of Interrogation

In connection with some teaching that I have coming up, I’ve prepared a short outline summarizing the law of interrogation. It’s available as a PDF here. It covers voluntariness, Miranda, and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, plus the recording requirements of G.S. 15A-211, including the statutory amendments that took effect on December 1. I … Read more

News Roundup

I didn’t round up the news last week because of the Thanksgiving holiday, so I’m awash in interesting stories today. Perhaps the biggest story is that the General Assembly has voted to amend the Racial Justice Act in a way that would effectively repeal the law. The News and Observer has the story here. The … Read more