North Carolina Criminal Law

This blog post is divided in two parts. This is Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow. The United States Supreme Court in 2009 issued a ruling in Arizona […]

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I wrote here about how law enforcement officers may obtain historical information about the location of a suspect’s cellular phone. There have been several developments in the law since then, […]

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Law enforcement use of automated license plate readers has become very widespread. It raises several interesting legal and practical issues which I briefly explore below. What are they? License plate […]

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The question. Many cases hold that the smell of marijuana provides probable cause to search a vehicle. See, e.g., State v. Greenwood, 301 N.C. 705, 708 (1981); State v. Smith, […]

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Most search warrants are obtained before anyone has been charged with a crime. But sometimes officers will charge a defendant and then decide to obtain a search warrant to seek […]

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I’ve been asked several times recently whether people who are not sworn law-enforcement officers may apply for search warrants. Somewhat to my surprise, the answer is yes. Statutory analysis. For […]

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Yesterday the Supreme Court decided a case that one Justice called “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades.” A bare majority of the […]

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There’s been quite a buzz lately about Google Glass, a “wearable computer” that looks like a pair of eyeglasses but that uses the lenses as transparent screens to display information […]

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Last year, I announced the debut of “the School of Government’s first smartphone app, a guide to the law of search and seizure called ASSET.” Over 4,000 people installed the […]

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Today, most Supreme Court watchers are focused on the oral argument in the same-sex marriage cases. But the Court also released an important opinion in Florida v. Jardines, ruling that […]

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