A UNC School of Government Blog
The New York Times reported earlier this week that driving under the influence of marijuana is significantly less risky than driving with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08. That’s a good thing, since the Times also reported that impairment from marijuana is difficult to detect using the current battery of standardized field sobriety tests and difficult … Read more
Regular and well-publicized checkpoints are an important component of the State’s effort to curtail impaired driving. Checkpoints provide specific as well as general deterrence. A handful of impaired drivers typically are arrested at any given checking station and subsequently prosecuted for impaired driving. Many more drivers than are stopped hear about the checkpoint. That publicity … Read more
Author’s Note: The opinion discussed below was withdrawn on February 4, 2014 and replaced by an opinion discussed here. How can a sentencing factor found by a judge that doubles a defendant’s maximum sentence not implicate Blakely? I pondered this question a few years ago after the court of appeals in State v. Green, … Read more
In a recent case, State v. Holloman, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that the trial court erred by convicting the defendant of both first-degree kidnapping and sexual assault when the sexual assault raised the kidnapping to first-degree. Since the issue is a recurring one, let’s review the rules. A person is guilty of … Read more
Local law enforcement officers have a little bit of extra territorial jurisdiction when it comes to investigating impaired driving. That grant of extra territorial jurisdiction (as opposed to extraterritorial jurisdiction, which city officers already had) was created by the Motor Vehicle Driver Protection Act of 2006 and codified in G.S. 20-38.2. General Rules. G.S. 15A-402 … Read more
Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich believes that that bestiality is constitutionally protected private sexual activity, and thinks that a recent federal court ruling supports his claim. This post examines the issue briefly. North Carolina law. Bestiality is illegal under G.S. 14-177, which makes it a Class I felony to “commit the crime against nature, … Read more
I’ve had a number of people ask me what’s going on around the state with internet sweepstakes. Below, I set out what I know, but there’s so much going on in this area that I’m sure I’m missing something. Please add to the knowledge base by posting a comment if you know more. New games. … Read more
Each Halloween also seems to bring a wave of news stories related to sex offenders. There apparently isn’t evidence to back up the concern, but some jurisdictions have laws prohibiting registered offenders from participating in Halloween activities. In Missouri, for example, all registrants were required to remain indoors between 5:00 and 10:30 p.m. on October … Read more
Counting the number of sections in a chapter of the General Statutes is pretty dull work. But doing it over and over again in order to see the growth in a single chapter over time may yield interesting results. In preparation for a panel discussion about overcriminalization this evening, I counted the number of sections … Read more
