Category: Procedure

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

Criminal defendants, especially those sentenced to long prison terms, sometimes try to attack their convictions and sentences by claiming that their trial lawyers provided ineffective assistance of counsel. The state […]

Last year, the Onion (my favorite news satire outfit) ran an article headlined “Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text.” It’s a pretty funny take on modern society’s overreliance […]

According to the News and Observer, the trial of Laurence Lovette begins today in Hillsborough. Lovette is charged with the first-degree murder of Eve Carson, who was, at the time […]

According to my teenaged kids, “corpus delicti” sounds like something that will get you in trouble if you write about it on a government-sponsored blog. It is, however, an issue […]

As a general rule, some decisions in the course of a criminal trial are made by the defendant and others are made by defense counsel. A defendant decides, for example, […]

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexually assaulting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009. The principal New York Times story is here. ESPN’s coverage […]