North Carolina Criminal Law

I have written before about the cache associated with a handful of unpublished opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Sure, they aren’t binding, but they can be persuasive. […]

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It is no secret that probable cause hearings are rare throughout North Carolina, despite clear provisions for conducting them in the general statutes. See G.S. 15A-606, 611-614. The reasons for […]

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If I had to answer the question in the title of this post in the briefest possible way, I would say: not usually. But there’s a lot of uncertainty and […]

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A new statute, effective next month (March 1, 2024), will give prosecutors greater power to combine the value of stolen property to justify a harsher sentence for certain financial crimes. […]

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I am happy to announce that a new Administration of Justice Bulletin, The Pretrial Integrity Act, is now available. It answers several questions raised by the new pretrial release laws enacted […]

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My colleague, Phil Dixon, blogged about the Court of Appeals’ decision in State v. Joyner, 284 N.C. App. 681 (2022), here. In Joyner, the court ruled that the State did […]

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Because the State’s ability to prove impairment in prosecutions for driving while impaired often turns on whether the officer had probable cause to arrest — and thereafter test — the […]

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The following post is authored by SOG faculty member Kristi Nickodem. A version of this post is also available on the Coates’ Canons and On the Civil Side SOG blogs.  […]

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My colleague Jeff Welty recently wrote about S.L. 2023-123 and changes to our death by drug distribution laws. He mentioned changes to the mandatory drug trafficking fines for certain drugs […]

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I recently finished a new Administration of Justice Bulletin on Pretrial Release in Criminal Domestic Violence Cases. It is available here as a free download. Through a series of questions and answers, the […]

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