North Carolina Criminal Law

Even the greenest of prosecutors knows to ask it.  And all officers, from rookie to veteran, know how to answer. Rare is the impaired driving case without it. What’s the […]

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Suppose a police officer patrolling a city street lawfully pulls over a car with out-of-state tags. When the officer asks the driver for his driver’s license, the driver tells the […]

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Remember Britt v. State, 363 N.C. 546 (2009), in which the state supreme court ruled that a man with a single, non-violent felony conviction from 1979 had a state constitutional […]

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Drunk driving has long been a phrase in the national lexicon of terms related driving and public safety. Over the past decade, a companion term—drugged driving—has entered into common usage […]

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Do law-abiding North Carolina residents have a right to carry a gun openly in public? Generally, yes. Federal constitutional right? The Supreme Court has recently ruled that the Second Amendment […]

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Cyclist Lance Armstrong has recently confessed to using performance enhancing drugs during each of his seven Tour de France victories. Public discussion has focused on whether his apology, during an […]

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Happy New Year! I feel like I spent most of 2012 talking about Justice Reinvestment. Let’s start 2013 with a more agreeable subject—like sex offenders. In one of its final […]

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Horses are vehicles, according to our state court of appeals. In State v. Dellinger, 73 N.C. App. 685 (1985), the court upheld the defendant’s conviction for impaired driving based upon […]

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After I eliminated this offense from the 7th edition of North Carolina Crimes, a few people asked me to add it back in. A statistics report from the N.C. Administrative […]

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Can Durham ban the possession or sale of assault rifles? In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I have been asked several times whether gun regulations […]

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