North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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We’ll start with a pop quiz: A police officer sees that the right brake light of a vehicle fails to illuminate when the driver applies brakes while driving down a […]

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Can a police officer order a suspect to empty his or her pockets during a Terry stop? The New York Times reports on claims that New York officers do so […]

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From time to time, an officer from another state wants to get medical records from a North Carolina hospital. For example, a South Carolina officer may want the medical records […]

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I’ve written about traffic stops at some length, in this paper. One of the areas in which the law is unsettled is the extent to which officers may engage in […]

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Suppose that a magistrate is asked to issue a search warrant for a particular residence. Based on the information presented to her by the applicant, the magistrate believes that there […]

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G.S. 20-141.4 sets forth six offenses based upon the unlawful killing or injuring of another during the commission of a motor vehicle offense.  All but one of these death or […]

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Virtually all courts interpreted Belton v. New York, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), to authorize a law enforcement officer to search the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle incident to the […]

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