North Carolina Criminal Law

Author’s Note: The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals decision in State v. Brice, which is discussed in the body of this post.  You can read about […]

Read post

Judges are lawyers, and lawyers are subject to discipline by the State Bar. Does that mean that judges are subject to discipline by the State Bar? Generally not, according to […]

Read post

The court of appeals held last month in State v. Turner, __ N.C. App. __, 793 S.E.2d 287 (2016), temp. stay allowed, __ N.C. __ (2016), that the issuance of […]

Read post

The court of appeals held yesterday in State v. Turner, __ N.C. App. ___ (2016), that the issuance of a magistrate’s order charging a defendant with driving while impaired did […]

Read post

Twenty-five years ago the North Carolina Supreme Court departed from national standards on attorney-client decision-making and gave clients greater control over the direction of their case, including trial strategy and […]

Read post

This post addresses three recurrent issues concerning eyewitness identification: When, if at all, is expert testimony about eyewitness identification admissible? When, if at all, is an indigent defendant entitled to […]

Read post

A case involving charges of impaired driving is calendared on today’s district court docket. The defendant was charged more than two years ago; the case has been continued several times […]

Read post

Last week, the North Carolina Court of Appeals in State v. Watson (October 18, 2016) ruled that an officer’s erroneous completion of a juvenile waiver of rights form did not […]

Read post

So say two statutes enacted by the General Assembly in 2011 as part of its revision of North Carolina’s self-defense law. G.S. 14-51.2(e) and G.S. 14-51.3(b) both state that a […]

Read post

Is it proper to charge a defendant separately with a greater offense and with a lesser-included offense? For example, is it proper to charge a defendant with robbery and with […]

Read post