North Carolina Criminal Law

The General Assembly has passed H 937, which awaits the Governor’s signature. It is an omnibus gun bill, following rather closely on the heels of the omnibus firearms bill enacted […]

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I was on vacation with my family last week, and there’s nothing quite like a drive across our fair state to spur interest in motor vehicle laws.  Here are a […]

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Last week, a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of all charges in connection with the killing of Trayvon Martin. Some are now calling for Zimmerman to be charged federally. In […]

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Background. In State v. Byrd, 363 N.C. 214 (2009), the state supreme court concluded that an ex parte domestic violence protective order, or DVPO, was not a “valid protective order” […]

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Nearly two thousand defendants were charged last year with aiding and abetting driving while impaired in violation of G.S. 20-138.1. A defendant aids and abets impaired driving when he knowingly […]

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Drug trafficking offenses can lead to really long sentences, and not just because of the special minimums and maximums that apply to those crimes. Consider this example: My husband and […]

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A caller recently asked this: If a defendant throws another person’s computer against the wall and breaks it, can the defendant be charged with the felony of Damaging a Computer? […]

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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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