North Carolina Criminal Law

Last month, the North Carolina court of appeals decided State v. Graves, No. COA09-595 (March 16, 2010), a case involving the defendant’s appeal from his convictions for felony speeding to […]

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by School of Government Immigration Law Specialist Sejal Zota Is defense counsel constitutionally obligated to inform a noncitizen criminal defendant whether his guilty plea carries a risk of deportation? Yesterday, […]

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Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided Berghuis v. Smith, a case in which the defendant claimed that the pool from which his jury was selected was not a fair […]

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I’ve been a little under the weather this week, so I thought I’d do a post about communicable diseases. One question that comes up frequently is whether an arrestee can […]

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Article 1, section 10 of the Constitution—the Compacts Clause—authorizes two or more states to enter into agreements or compacts with one another, provided they have the consent of Congress. Dozens […]

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I blogged recently about whether the state is obligated to produce its witnesses’ criminal records in discovery. (Recall that the answer is no, in North Carolina, with some exceptions.) Another […]

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In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), the Supreme Court held that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who […]

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Among the most frequently asked motor vehicle law questions is whether a person convicted of impaired driving for an offense that occurred when the person was less than 21 years […]

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Who has the final say about whether to strike a prospective juror – the defendant or his lawyer? That’s the question addressed by the court of appeals today in State […]

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Defendants sometimes argue, usually in sexual assault cases, that the complaining witness should not be called a “victim” during court proceedings. The basis of the argument is that using that […]

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