A UNC School of Government Blog
The Supreme Court of North Carolina recently decided State v. Mbacke, an important case about searches incident to arrest. I mentioned Mbacke briefly in this prior post, which noted that the court of appeals’ decision in the case was impossible to reconcile with the same court’s decision in the similar case of State v. Foy. … Read more
The lead story in the January 30, 2012 issue of North Carolina Lawyer’s Weekly was headlined “Necessary’s Restraint: The night police officer Richard Necessary sat on a drunk-driving suspect in order to get a blood sample might prove to be the night when courts realized enough is enough.” The newspaper reported that a superior court … Read more
Several years ago, I blogged about a case in which the government sought to compel a criminal defendant to provide the password to his encrypted computer, or at least, to provide an unencrypted copy of the contents of his hard drive. You can read that post here. It’s time to revisit the topic, for two … Read more
A recent en banc decision from the Supreme Court of Missouri adds to the growing divide among state appellate courts regarding whether the exigency created by the dissipation of blood-alcohol levels is sufficient, by itself, to render a nonconsensual, warrantless blood draw from a person arrested for impaired driving a reasonable search and seizure under … Read more
I’ve had quite a few questions from officers and others about United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court’s recent GPS tracking decision. I previously summarized the case here. Below, I’ve collected some of the questions I’ve been asked and my answers. It should go without saying that officers should check with their supervisors and agency … Read more
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided United States v. Jones, the important GPS tracking case I previously blogged about here. (The case was captioned United States v. Maynard at that time.) In brief, Washington, DC officers suspected that the defendant was a drug dealer. They wanted to track his movements, so they obtained a … Read more
NCAWARE is an acronym for the North CArolina WArrant REpository. It is the computer system that is used by judicial officials, usually magistrates, to create criminal process documents such as arrest warrants and criminal summonses. The documents are stored permanently in the system, and can be viewed by anyone with access to the system. The … Read more
In connection with some teaching that I have coming up, I’ve prepared a short outline summarizing the law of interrogation. It’s available as a PDF here. It covers voluntariness, Miranda, and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, plus the recording requirements of G.S. 15A-211, including the statutory amendments that took effect on December 1. I … Read more
At the start of the fall semester, the Daily Tar Heel reported that Chapel Hill and Carrboro police officers have combined forces with UNC campus police in an effort to ramp up enforcement of laws prohibiting underage drinking. The article states that undercover operations are among the tactics employed by the town’s Alcohol Law Enforcement … Read more
I’ve recently been asked by several people whether it is lawful to require officers to issue a certain number of citations, or to make a certain number of arrests, per day or per month. Generally, I think it is lawful, subject to some important caveats. Let me start by noting that the use of quotas … Read more