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North Carolina Criminal Law

At the UNC School of Government

Category: Crimes and Elements

Aiding and Abetting

Under the common law doctrine of aiding and abetting, a person is considered to be a principal to a crime when: (1)  a crime is committed by another, (2)  the […]

Remain Within the Jurisdiction

It is a regular condition of probation for all supervised probationers that they “[r]emain within the jurisdiction of the court unless granted written permission to leave by the court or […]

Internet Sweepstakes Update

I’ve blogged before about the General Assembly’s latest effort to eradicate internet sweepstakes. Because G.S. 14-306.4 went into effect yesterday, I’ve had lots of questions about the law. (I even […]

Strict Liability Crimes

In prior posts, I discussed transferred intent and criminal negligence. Intent and criminal negligence, along with malice and willfulness are some of the common states of mind that the prosecution […]

Criminal Negligence

Criminal negligence (sometimes called culpable negligence) means recklessness or carelessness that shows a thoughtless disregard of consequences or a heedless indifference to the safety and rights of others. State v. […]

Transferred Intent

Suppose a defendant acts intending to do one thing but ends up doing something else. For example, suppose the defendant shoots at A, intending to kill A, but misses and […]

Cyberbullying

Perhaps in response to news reports of teen suicides blamed on embarrassing and/or insensitive web postings, I have been fielding a fair number of calls about North Carolina’s cyberbullying statute. […]