A UNC School of Government Blog
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachussetts, as most readers of this blog know, is the United States Supreme Court’s latest pronouncement on the Confrontation Clause. Generally, it holds that forensic laboratory reports — like chemical analyses of drugs, DNA tests, and so on — are “testimonial” for Confrontation Clause purposes. That means a laboratory report generally may not … Read more
Last week the court of appeals decided State v. Wagoner, its latest case involving satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Mr. Wagoner, who had previously been convicted of multiple reportable sex crimes in 1996, pled no contest to another one (indecent liberties with a child) in 2005. He received a suspended sentence for the 2005 … Read more
I’m working on revising Arrest Warrant and Indictment Forms, a manual that provides charging language for several hundred common offenses. In the course of working on language for possession of stolen goods and receiving stolen goods, I noticed a couple of things that might be of interest. First, there are two statutes that criminalize each … Read more
In my last post on this topic, I addressed the “new rule” prong of Teague retroactivity analysis as it applies to Melendez-Diaz. I ended that post by noting that another aspect of retroactivity analysis that has been raised regarding Melendez-Diaz is whether the Teague test applies in North Carolina motion for appropriate relief proceedings in … Read more
Jeff Welty blogged here and Jessica Smith published a paper here about the implications of the Supreme Court’s holding in Melendez-Diaz that forensic laboratory reports are testimonial, rendering the affiants witnesses who are subject to the defendant’s right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment. I’ve been pondering the impact of the court’s holding on the … Read more
I’m a little like a broadcaster for a small-market sports team, in that I’m a relentless “homer,” always impressed with the efforts of the School of Government faculty. With that disclaimer in mind, my colleague Michael Crowell has just published a terrific paper, available for free here, about courts’ authority to impose time limits on … Read more
Crime victims who aren’t citizens may be reluctant to come forward, particularly if they are in the United States illegally. Congress attempted to address this problem in 2000, by creating a special category of temporary visa for crime victims who assist authorities in investigating and prosecuting those who victimized them. These visas, called U visas, have not … Read more
I was on vacation last week, and the buzz around Melendez-Diaz — see this prior post for the basics — was partly drowned out by the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. But only partly, because Melendez-Diaz is a big case, with significant implications for North Carolina, and questions about it were still … Read more
I recently presented a case law update at the DAs’ conference, and there was a reasonable amount of interest in a case decided earlier this year by the Court of Appeals. The case is State v. Dean, __ N.C. App. __, 674 S.E.2d 453 (2009), and the issue that I thought was most interesting had … Read more
I previously posted about the Supreme Court’s decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, the basic holding of which is that a judge must recuse him- or herself from a case when someone with a “personal stake” in the matter played a “significant and disproportionate” role in the judge’s election, such as by raising … Read more