A UNC School of Government Blog
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
The U.S. Supreme Court’s new Crawford confrontation clause rule has had significant impact in child victim prosecutions, largely because of problems with getting children to testify. One frequent Crawford question that arises in these cases is: Are a child’s statements to a social worker testimonial? In a paper here, I explore the testimonial analysis and … 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
The court of appeals issued a new batch of opinions today. They’re available in full here, and Jessie just sent summaries out to the listserv. (If you haven’t joined the listserv for case summaries, you can do so here.) The thing that jumped out at me about today’s cases was that the court found several … Read more
In a blog post here, I wrote about overstating possible punishment and the voluntary nature of a plea. In that post, I discussed the dangers of overstating the possible maximum sentence with respect to consecutive sentences and recent changes to post-release supervision. That post prompted questions about a related issue. Here’s the set up: At … Read more
The John Edwards jury is back today for its ninth day of deliberations. The general feeling seems to be, “what’s taking so long?” This morning, I got to wondering whether nine days is merely really long, or whether it is really, really, spectacularly and historically long. Seems like the former. A few minutes on the … Read more
Last July, Jamie Markham provided this refresher on aggravating factors in structured sentencing cases in which he discussed, among other provisions, the requirement that the State provide a defendant with written notice of its intent to prove aggravating factors. A reader requested that we follow up by discussing the related notice provision in G.S. 20-179(a1). … Read more
In a prior post on this topic, I began outlining some impermissible types of jury argument. In this post, I’ll continue that discussion with the following additional listing of improper argument: Religious Arguments. The N.C. Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned against jury arguments based on religion, see, e.g., State v. Barden, 356 N.C. 316 (2002), … Read more
In my previous post I wrote about In re Hamilton, a recent appellate case involving petitions to terminate sex offender registration. In Hamilton, the court of appeals held that a trial court erred when it found under G.S. 14-208.12A that removing a person convicted of indecent liberties with a minor from the sex offender registry … Read more
A recent case from the court of appeals sheds some light on a frequently asked question about petitions for removal from the sex offender registry. The case, In re Hamilton, considered a trial court’s refusal to grant a petition because granting it would not comply with the federal Jacob Wetterling Act, as amended, and other … Read more