A UNC School of Government Blog
Jeff Welty 
We’re trying something novel today. Jamie Markham has prepared our first video blog post, in which he highlights sentencing and corrections stories to follow in 2011. It includes a discussion of sex offender laws, the Bowden life-sentenced inmates, and several other important issues, so please check it out. And let us know what you think … Read more
I thought I’d take a minute to discuss three questions that I get about prescription drugs. [Update: Several people posted comments or emailed me about the relationship between prescription drugs and controlled substances. I discussed that issue in some detail in this post, but briefly, some prescription drugs contain controlled substances and some don’t. Certainly, … Read more
It’s time for the first news roundup of the new year! There have been quite a few interesting stories recently, including the following: 1. The New York Times reports that cell phones are widespread in prison. One Georgia inmate reports that “almost everybody has a phone,” usually a smartphone. In addition to playing FarmVille on … Read more
As I noted in a previous post, it is a crime under G.S. 14-454(b) “willfully and without authorization . . . [to] access[] . . . any computer.” I posed a few scenarios in that earlier post, including one in which a judge tells a law clerk not to use the internet during business hours … Read more
Happy new year! It’s great to be back at work after a relaxing vacation. I’ve written before about traffic stops. Recently, I returned to the subject and completed a pretty detailed primer on traffic stops and the Fourth Amendment. The paper, which is available here, treats traffic stops chronologically. First it addresses when a traffic … Read more
Tomorrow’s a holiday, and the blog is going on vacation next week, so this will be the last post of 2010. Before rounding up the news, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who reads, subscribes to, posts comments on, suggests topics for, or contributes in any other way to this blog. It … Read more
State court decisions from other southeastern states seem to carry a bit more weight as persuasive authority than do cases from jurisdictions that are farther afield. Therefore, I thought I’d summarize a recent decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals about searching cell phones incident to arrest. The case is Hawkins v. State. A police … Read more
It’s been two weeks since the last news roundup, so there’s a lot to report: 1. Superior Court Judges Catherine Eagles and Ripley Rand have been confirmed by the Senate to new federal jobs in the Middle District of North Carolina, Rand as United States Attorney and Eagles as a district judge. Congratulations to both! … Read more
I’ve written about law enforcement access to electronic communications, both on this blog and, more extensively, in this Administration of Justice Bulletin. One major issue is how and when law enforcement can obtain a suspect’s email from the suspect’s email provider. There are lots of wrinkles, but broadly, there’s a federal statute called the Stored … Read more
An involuntary confession can’t be used against a defendant at trial, not even to impeach him if he testifies. See, e.g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385 (1978). Whether a confession is voluntary is determined by examining the totality of the circumstances, see, e.g., Withrow v. Williams, 507 U.S. 680 (1993), and asking whether “the … Read more