September 11, 2013
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 […]
August 27, 2013
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 […]
August 21, 2013
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 […]
July 10, 2013
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 […]
June 27, 2013
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 […]
June 20, 2013
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 […]
June 10, 2013
My recent paper (here) on the use of remote testimony in criminal cases involving forensic analysts was written in part because of the flood of interest in legislative solutions to […]
May 21, 2013
As I noted in my last post on Rule 404(b) evidence, even when the evidence is relevant to an issue other than propensity or disposition, admissibility is “constrained by the […]
May 14, 2013
Suppose that a murder defendant goes by the street name “Hit Man.” The prosecution wants the investigating officer to testify that she received a tip that “Hit Man” committed the […]
May 13, 2013
Even when Rule 404(b) evidence is relevant to an issue other than propensity or disposition, admissibility is “constrained by the requirements of similarity and temporal proximity.” State v. Beckelheimer, __ […]