A UNC School of Government Blog
I previously posted (here) about impeaching a witness with a prior inconsistent statement. In this blog post I’ll address impeaching with evidence of bias. As our blog readers know, a witness may be impeached with evidence that he or she is biased because of, for example, affection for or dislike of a party or self-interest … Read more
DWI law scholars, answer the following question. Are the results of all breath tests that were administered to the defendant admissible in an implied consent case? Yes, if the results from any two consecutively collected breath samples do not differ from each other by more than 0.02. No, only the two consecutively collected breath samples … Read more
Tucked into the 2013 North Carolina budget bill is a provision imposing new court costs for expert witnesses who testify about chemical or forensic analyses at trial. Specifically, the new law (sec. 18B.19 of the budget bill) provides that upon conviction the trial judge must require a convicted defendant to pay $600 in costs if … Read more
In State v. Cooper, issued last week, the Court of Appeals reversed the defendant’s conviction for first-degree murder of his wife and ordered a new trial. The case has drawn considerable media attention; recent news reports indicate that the State intends to petition the state Supreme Court for review. This blog post focuses on one … Read more
Trial lawyers love a good gotcha moment and this method of impeachment–by prior inconsistent statement–presents lots of opportunities for that. Proving that a witness previously made statements inconsistent with his or her trial testimony impeaches the witness by casting doubt on the witness’s credibility. Note that use of a prior inconsistent statement for impeachment purposes … Read more
When may rap lyrics written by a defendant be admitted as evidence of guilt? That question has been in the news quite a bit lately as a result of a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court. (For example, see this ABC News story, or this Washington Post piece.) There’s also some North Carolina authority on … Read more
The North Carolina Court of Appeals decided its first breath-testing source code case yesterday. The court in State v. Marino affirmed the trial court’s determination that the defendant had no right to examine the source code for the Intoximeter EC IR II, the instrument used to analyze his breath alcohol concentration after he was arrested … Read more
If you’re on my listserv, you know that the NC Supreme Court recently issued several confrontation clause decisions, all dealing with substitute analysts (if you’re not on my listserv, you can sign up here for my case summaries). I’ve previously written (here) about Williams v. Illinois, the US Supreme Court’s most recent confrontation decision on … Read more
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 advises, instigates, encourages, or aids another person to drive while impaired and his actions cause or contribute to the commission of the crime. See State … Read more
Rule 45. This rule surprised me. Before I learned about it, I assumed that when a party sought to introduce hospital medical records at trial, a records custodian appeared in court to testify that the records met the requirements for the business records hearsay exception. Turns out, however, that because of this rule, custodians of … Read more