North Carolina Criminal Law

The Fourth Circuit recently decided United States v. Ramos-Cruz, a case involving an MS-13 member who was convicted of assorted federal crimes, all generally tied to his gang membership and […]

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In the last in this series of posts on pretrial release I’ll address two issues that continue to create problems for judicial officials: defendants who refuse to identify themselves and […]

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In a post here, I listed my top five indictment errors. The number one error was misstating the victim’s name in an indictment charging larceny or a related crime interfering […]

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Part I of this post ended by noting that, like the racing forfeiture provisions in G.S. 20-141.3—and unlike the DWI seizure and forfeiture laws—the new felony speeding to elude seizure […]

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My nomination for catchiest short title of the 2011 legislative session goes to House Bill 427, enrolled and chaptered as S.L. 2011-271, and short-titled “Run and You’re Done.”  The aptly […]

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As a general rule, and subject to local bond policy, the law gives judicial officials a great deal of discretion to determine the appropriate conditions of pretrial release. In some […]

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NCAWARE is an acronym for the North CArolina WArrant REpository. It is the computer system that is used by judicial officials, usually magistrates, to create criminal process documents such as […]

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In my first post in this series, I addressed the issue of who is entitled to conditions of pretrial release. In this post, I’ll address who can set conditions and […]

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Pretrial release didn’t used to be complicated. But over the last 10 years or so that’s changed, with the addition of exceptions and special procedures. In a series of posts, […]

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It’s December 1, and a lot of new laws (the News & Observer counts 35) come into effect today. Among them is the Justice Reinvestment Act—or at least portions of […]

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