A UNC School of Government Blog
The court of appeals’ decision last January in State v. McKenzie was big news in the DWI world. The state’s intermediate appellate court held the one-year disqualification of a defendant’s commercial driver’s license (CDL) stemming from charges that he drove his personal vehicle while impaired amounted to criminal punishment. Thus, the court of appeals concluded, … 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
Is it reasonable to believe that the car an impaired driver is operating contains evidence of the DWI? That’s the question law enforcement officers must answer in a post-Gant world before searching the vehicle recently operated by a defendant arrested for DWI and secured outside the vehicle. Review. The United States Supreme Court held in … Read more
Our family gathers at the coast for Labor Day weekend. You’d be amazed how many motor vehicle law questions my relatives can generate over the course of a few hours on the road and a few days in the sand and surf. What follows is a sampling of this weekend’s questions and my answers. 1. … Read more
School started back this week across the state, which means that many school buses are traveling the roadways. Buses in my neighborhood hit the pavement early—one drove by this morning shortly after 6 a.m.—and often still are completing their routes when commuters begin to drive home from work. The advent of a new school year … 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
What is the basis for the indefinite license revocation reflected in the driving record entry below? A. A revocation under G.S. 20-24.1 for failure to appear for a motor vehicle offense. B. A revocation under G.S. 20-24.1 for failure to pay a fine, penalty or court costs ordered by the court upon conviction of a … Read more
This blog post is divided in two parts. This is Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow. The United States Supreme Court in 2009 issued a ruling in Arizona v. Gant that significantly restricted an officer’s authority, based on the theory of search incident to arrest, to conduct a search of the passenger compartment … Read more
One of the newest attractions in downtown Raleigh is the Trolley Pub. Passengers board the open air bar on wheels in the Warehouse District and slowly cruise the city streets, traveling from one watering hole to another by means of the pedal power they supply. In addition to providing the power-source for locomotion, riders provide … Read more
(Editor’s note: Jamie Markham is a co-author of this post.) Level A1 DWI. The General Assembly created Aggravated Level One sentencing for misdemeanor impaired driving in 2011. See S.L. 2011-191 (enacting G.S. 20-179(f3)). Level A1 sentences require a term of imprisonment that includes a minimum term of 12 months and a maximum term of not … Read more