A UNC School of Government Blog
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
Shea Denning, who is the motor vehicle and DWI expert on the School of Government’s faculty, has read, re-read, and re-re-read State v. Fowler and State v. Palmer, the recent Court of Appeals cases concerning the special procedures for motions to suppress and motions to dismiss in DWI cases. The product of her labors is … Read more
North Carolina has been all over the web recently. The News and Observer’s habitual felon article, which I discussed in a previous post, has made a splash on several of the most-read criminal law blogs — here and here (both links involve some scrolling) — with some of the reaction being positive, and some less … Read more
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided a case that could have been the subject of a John Grisham novel. The case is Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, and the basic facts are as follows. Massey is a huge coal mining conglomerate. Caperton is the president of a much smaller company. Caperton and his … Read more
Editor’s note: A previous post concerning a United States Supreme Court case about post-conviction DNA testing appears here. Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of calls about requests for post-conviction DNA testing. Since there seems to be a bit of confusion about how these requests should be made and handled, I thought it might be … Read more
The other day I posted my thoughts about the “Jacob Wetterling” provision in G.S. 14-208.12A. While that provision raises what I think are the most difficult questions related to petitions to terminate sex offender registration, they are by no means the only questions. Here are some others (along with my best attempt to answer them, … Read more
Two statutes enacted as part of the Motor Vehicle Driver Protection Act of 2006, G.S. 20-38.6 and 20-38.7, significantly altered district court procedures for implied consent offenses committed on or after December 1, 2006. G.S. 20-38.6(a) requires that motions to suppress evidence or dismiss charges in such cases be made pre-trial, except for motions to … Read more