North Carolina Criminal Law

In State v. Harvey, ___ N.C. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___ (June 14, 2019), a five to one majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the unpublished decision of a […]

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Suppose the State is prosecuting a defendant for the sexual assault of a young child. Though the child has been identified by name in the arrest warrant and investigative reports […]

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Several years ago (some might say that’s an understatement) I wrote The Law of Self-Defense in North Carolina, in which I looked at over 200 years’ worth of North Carolina […]

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Back in November of last year, I wrote about hemp and CBD laws here. I have been teaching quite a bit on the subject lately and wanted to follow up […]

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Let’s start with a brainteaser: If there are no North Carolina criminal appellate cases citing to Rules of Evidence 803(7) or 803(10), does that prove that the rules are never […]

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In a post here, I noted that under state law, counties, cities, towns, and metropolitan sewerage districts have authority to create crimes through local ordinances. This is a somewhat controversial […]

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A new study by UNC professors raises questions about how we think about drug prosecutions. In Sharks and Minnows in the War on Drugs: A Study of Quantity, Race, and […]

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Earlier this week, I was asked to provide a criminal law case update to a group of attorneys. I started the session by giving them a quiz, which I thought […]

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This question has come up more than once around here lately, so I thought it would be worth summarizing in a blog post. The defendant is in district court charged […]

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Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Miller, a case in which the defendant was convicted of maintaining a dwelling based almost entirely on the fact that he […]

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