North Carolina Criminal Law

Courts look with particular suspicion on character evidence, and a number of rules seek to confine that sort of evidence to its proper place. Two recent cases illustrate the problem. […]

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In mounting a diminished capacity or voluntary intoxication defense in a first-degree murder case, the defense attempts to “negate” the element of specific intent, premeditation, or deliberation. To negate in […]

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Law enforcement officers regularly work with Confidential Informants (CIs) when investigating organized crime or building cases against individuals in leadership positions within criminal enterprises. CIs are most commonly involved in […]

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Child welfare records maintained by a department of social services (DSS) contain sensitive information that parties in various proceedings are often interested in seeing. A complex web of state and […]

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In light of the recent Court of Appeals opinion State v. Moore, this post is a follow-up to the 2018 blog post State v. Fincher: No Foundation Required for DRE […]

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Special thanks to Sloan Godbey, Summer Law Fellow at UNC SOG, for their significant contributions to this post. In March of last year, I did a thorough review of North […]

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Character evidence is one of the most challenging areas of evidence law to navigate, as Jessie Smith observes here. Jessie’s blog features a useful chart to apply Rules 404 and […]

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A defendant who claims self-defense is generally permitted to offer evidence of the victim’s prior violent conduct if known to the defendant at the time defensive force was used. Such […]

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A common evidence question that arises is how to properly authenticate digital communications. We have written on the topic in several blogs: How Can a Party Show Authorship of a […]

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I have been covering developments around the legalization of hemp in North Carolina since 2018. Never did I suspect then that I would still be working on the topic all […]

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