North Carolina Criminal Law

The State’s failure to accord a defendant his or her statutory implied consent rights as set forth in G.S. 20-16.2 may render the results of any ensuing breath test inadmissible. When a […]

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This post discusses what may be the single most common error in habitual felon proceedings: having a defendant stipulate, rather than plead guilty, to being a habitual felon. Must plead […]

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I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the Garden State, but it seems like there are a lot of people here in North Carolina with criminal records from New Jersey. […]

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Many veteran prosecutors know the rule, “plead in the conjunctive.” In other words, in an indictment or other charging document, join different theories of the crime with the word “and” […]

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Magistrates walk a tight rope of sorts in setting conditions of pretrial release for defendants charged with impaired driving offenses.  In addition to taking into account all of the factors […]

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Yesterday was Data Privacy Day, making this a good time to recap some recent developments in law enforcement access to email and other electronic communications. Data Privacy Day. You’re probably […]

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Kelvin Wilson’s DWI case made the front page of Lawyer’s Weekly last January.  Wilson was arrested for impaired driving in Winston-Salem and taken to the hospital. When he physically resisted […]

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In a post here I discussed a view of the person. In this post I’ll address the more common issue of a jury view. A trial judge may allow a […]

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Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided an important competency case. Let’s start the discussion with a quiz. Which of the following statements is true? a. A trial may be […]

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G.S. 14-196.3 prohibits “cyberstalking,” which the statute generally defines to mean using electronic communications to threaten, extort, make an abusive or embarrassing false statement about, or repeatedly harass another person. […]

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