A UNC School of Government Blog
Jeff Welty 
A recent question prompted me to research when a superior court judge should instruct the jury on a lesser included offense. The general standard is that a judge should do so if “the evidence would permit a jury rationally to find [the defendant] guilty of the lesser offense and acquit him of the greater.” State … Read more
G.S. 14-415.1 makes it unlawful for “any person who has been convicted of a felony to . . . possess . . . any firearm,” with limited exceptions. In State v. Garris, 191 N.C. App. 276 (2008), the court of appeals held that a defendant may be “convicted and sentenced only once for possession of … Read more
Although the furor about the Casey Anthony trial has generally died down, I am going back to the well one more time, because of this New York Times story. Briefly, the prosecution presented evidence at trial from the designer of computer forensic software called CacheBack, which the police had used to examine Anthony’s computer. He … Read more
Earlier this month, the court of appeals decided State v. Joe, __ N.C. App. __ (2011) (Stephens, J.). A Winston-Salem officer was patrolling a drug-infested apartment complex at 2:00 in the afternoon. The defendant was standing by the corner of a building in the complex, and when he saw the officer approach in his vehicle, … Read more
TV news broadcasts often start with sensational celebrity news that may not be tremendously substantive. I’ll follow suit and highlight this AP profile of Casey Anthony defense lawyer Jose Baez. He has a GED, ran two failed bikini companies before going to law school, and after graduation took eight years (!) to be admitted to … Read more
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin has this post about Caylee’s Law. Briefly, legislation has been introduced in many states that would make it a crime to fail to report a child’s death within one hour, or a child’s disappearance within 24 hours. Some organizations are even calling for a federal law. This activity … Read more
I’m back from a fantastic vacation, and am grateful to Jamie for keeping the blog afloat while I was gone. Blogging is a lot of fun but it can also be a little bit of work, and it’s great to have colleagues who are willing to shoulder the load when needed. Because I have a … Read more
Every now and then, someone asks me about international extradition. Usually it’s about Roman Polanski or some other bigwig charged in New York or California, but once in a while there’s a North Carolina connection, like “if Brad Cooper had fled to Canada, could he have been extradited back to stand trial?” Plus, it’s just … Read more
Suppose that a magistrate is asked to issue a search warrant for a particular residence. Based on the information presented to her by the applicant, the magistrate believes that there is approximately a 25% chance that a search of the residence will result in the discovery of evidence of the crime under investigation. When deciding … Read more
The United States Supreme Court decided a big Confrontation Clause case yesterday. I hope that Jessie Smith will do a full recap and analysis of it, but the central holding of Bullcoming v. New Mexico, from the Court’s syllabus, is that “[t]he Confrontation Clause . . . does not permit the prosecution to introduce a forensic … Read more