North Carolina Criminal Law

Like most of the rest of the country, I followed the recent confirmation hearings for Judge (now Justice) Kavanaugh with great interest. As the readers of this blog already know, […]

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A person who has previously been convicted of three non-overlapping felonies who commits a new felony in North Carolina may be indicted for the new felony and may be separately […]

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Defendants can lose confrontation rights a number of ways. Under the various notice and demand statutes, failure to object and demand the presence of the witness in a timely manner […]

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In my previous post, I wrote about who goes first when presenting evidence at a suppression hearing or trial, and the circumstances under which the normal order of presentation could […]

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Under the Crawford Confrontation Clause rule, testimonial statements by witnesses who aren’t subject to cross-examination at trial can’t be admitted unless the witness is unavailable and there has been a […]

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Back in April 2017, I blogged about State v. Jacobs, ___ N.C. App. ___, 798 S.E.2d 532 (March 12, 2017) here. That post focused on the preservation aspect of the […]

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The State of North Carolina goes to trial against Donnie Defendant, who is alleged to be the infamous “Tarheel State Killer” and charged with committing a series of brutal assaults […]

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The court of appeals held yesterday in State v. Fincher, ___ N.C. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ____ (2018), that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it permitted […]

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Some law enforcement agencies concerned about officers’ exposure to fentanyl have stopped field testing white powders. A question I’ve had several times is whether a magistrate may find probable cause […]

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A few weeks ago I participated in a seminar on digital evidence, and one of the topics we discussed was cell phone records (subscriber information, call detail records, historical location […]

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