North Carolina Criminal Law

When a defendant pleads guilty, he waives a variety of rights, including the right to a trial, the right to confront the witnesses against him, and so on. The waiver […]

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I mentioned earlier that the court of appeals decided two satellite-based monitoring cases this week. I discussed State v. Morrow on Wednesday. Today I’ll cover State v. Stines. In Stines, […]

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It seems like every batch of new opinions from the court of appeals includes at least one case on satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Yesterday’s batch had two. State […]

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After a grand jury returns a true bill of indictment, should an order for arrest (OFA) issue as a matter of course? Looking at the OFA form, you might think […]

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Regular readers know the court of appeals has decided a lot of cases recently dealing with satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Though many issues remain undecided, my sense is […]

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How long can a defendant be on probation for a single conviction? A.      Five years. B.      Eight years. C.      It depends. The best answer is C. A judge can sentence […]

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Like many lawyers, I served on a law review when I was a law student. It was a good experience: I became intimately familiar with the rules of legal citation, […]

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My colleague Michael Crowell recently published a paper on judicial recusal, available here as a free download. It includes a discussion of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. […]

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Back in July the court of appeals decided State v. Hubbard, a probation revocation case that I mentioned in passing but never really discussed in depth. In Hubbard the defendant’s […]

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Further Update: See Shea Denning’s post here about State v. Mumford, in which the court of appeals held that “logically inconsistent and legally contradictory” verdicts cannot stand. It has the […]

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