A UNC School of Government Blog
I’ve heard folks say that there is criminal law . . . and then there is impaired driving law. What I think they mean is that while impaired driving is, of course, a crime, subject to the rules of criminal procedure and constitutional provisions that apply generally to the investigation, charging, trial, conviction and sentencing … Read more
Can an officer’s visual estimate of a vehicle’s speed, uncorroborated by radar, pacing, or other techniques, support a speeding stop? The Fourth Circuit has been whipsawing back and forth on that question recently. First, in United States v. Sowards, __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 2386605 (4th Cir. June 26, 2012), a case I discussed here, … Read more
May an officer prolong a routine traffic stop for four and a half minutes to allow a drug dog to sniff the exterior of the vehicle–even if the officer lacks reasonable suspicion to believe that drugs are in the car? Yes she may. The court of appeals held this week in State v. Sellars, No. … Read more
Every so often, someone asks whether a person must have a driver’s license to drive a moped on a public street in this state. The answer is no—provided that the moped satisfies the definition of that term under state law. A moped is defined as “a vehicle that has two or three wheels, no external … Read more
[Editor’s Note: We are continuing to experience difficulty with our email subscription function. In attempting to remedy the problem, our hard-working technical folks accidentally sent two test email notifications to many subscribers yesterday afternoon. We apologize for the error and hope to have the system working smoothly soon.] I wrote here about a 2011 law … Read more
Five years ago, the General Assembly authorized judges to require that defendants placed on probation for a Level One or Level Two impaired driving offense abstain from consuming alcohol for at least thirty but not more than sixty days as verified by a continuous alcohol monitoring system. Continuous alcohol monitoring systems (CAM) employ ankle transmitter … Read more
Two earlier posts (here and here) explore whether North Carolina’s implied consent statutes or the U.S. Constitution require that notice of implied consent rights be provided in language that a person speaks or understands. As those posts report, the answer is unclear. There are no North Carolina appellate court decisions on point and courts in … Read more
Drunk drivers have difficulty driving in a straight line. Therefore, police officers frequently stop drivers who are weaving, suspecting them of impaired driving. Until very recently, it seemed that the law was settled that weaving alone could not support a DWI stop. Rather, “weaving plus,” or weaving combined with some other circumstance suggesting impairment, was … Read more
Several recent stories in the News and Observer (here, here, here, and here) have chronicled the SBI’s investigation into orders entered in certain impaired driving cases by former Wake County District Court Judge Kristin Ruth, who resigned last month. Newspaper reports characterize the orders at issue as purporting to alter the conviction date for impaired … Read more
I wrote here about several types of driver’s license revocations that can result from a person being charged with and convicted of impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1 as well as about a driver’s ability to obtain a limited driving privilege to mitigate the effects of the revocation that occurs upon conviction. The earlier post omitted … Read more