A UNC School of Government Blog
Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided State v. Miller, an interesting and very, very close constructive possession case. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges should all be aware of it. The short version of the facts is as follows: Winston-Salem police obtained a search warrant for a house based on suspicion of drug activity. … Read more
Over the past few months I’ve been getting some really interesting questions about contempt. Disclaimer: The real experts on our faculty when it comes to contempt are John Saxon, Michael Crowell, and Cheryl Howell—I’m just dabbling here. But there’s a connection to my field (sentencing), in that many of the questions I’m getting relate to … Read more
According to a News and Observer story available here, MySpace has provided the Attorney General’s office with a list of 2,116 registered North Carolina sex offenders who were on MySpace. (You can read more about this in the AG’s press release, here.) The SBI has shared the list with all 100 sheriffs, and the SBI’s … Read more
I posted yesterday about one of the recent Court of Appeals decisions. At the risk of going back to the well, I want to highlight another of those cases today. (I’ve got something else in mind for tomorrow.) In State v. Revels, available here, the defendant was convicted of second-degree murder. She appealed, claiming that … Read more
Because of a case currently pending in Gaston County — story here — several people have asked me about the law as it concerns scaring a person to death. Let me start off with two caveats. First, this post is not a comment on the Gaston County case, about which I know nothing more than … Read more
The Supreme Court (Washington, not Raleigh) has had a bit of a slow February so far, whether because of Justice Ginsburg’s well-publicized health problems or for some other reason. Still, it’s done a couple things of interest to criminal lawyers. First, it adopted a broad interpretation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9), which prohibits people who have … Read more
North Carolina has a number of different assault crimes, like simple assault, assault on a female, assault with a deadly weapon, and so on. We also have a confusing body of case law regarding the propriety of multiple assault convictions based on a single course of conduct. For example, can a defendant who assaults his … Read more
North Carolina law prohibits convicted felons from possessing firearms. See G.S. 14-415.1. I’ve had several recurrent questions about this offense, so here’s an FAQ about FIP (felon in possession): 1. Doesn’t North Carolina allow felons to possess long guns? Not anymore. North Carolina’s FIP law used to have lots of exceptions, including exceptions for long … Read more
Valentine’s day is coming up, which got me thinking about a fact pattern I ran into a while back. Dan wants to get his girlfriend, Ann, a present — say, roses — but doesn’t want to pay for the gift. So Dan tells Victor, a florist, that he’ll pay Victor in a few days if … Read more