North Carolina Criminal Law

The News and Observer reports today on “a proposal to collect DNA from suspects when they are arrested for felonies or violent crimes.” The bill in question is H1403, and […]

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Yesterday, I noted that the public safety exception to Miranda has been invoked in two recent terrorism cases to justify delaying the administration of Miranda warnings. A commenter correctly identified […]

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As everyone knows, a car bomb was recently found, and defused, in New York City. The New York Times summarizes the basic facts as follows: A crude car bomb made […]

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The scope of a suspect’s consent to search is determined objectively, by “what . . . the typical reasonable person [would] have understood by the exchange between the officer and […]

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The court of appeals issued several opinions yesterday. Among the most interesting is State v. Hopper, a case that addresses when an officer’s mistaken beliefs can support an investigative stop. […]

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The United States Supreme Court has decided two Miranda cases in the past two days. The prosecution won both cases. Tuesday, the Court decided Florida v. Powell. In Powell, the […]

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Jeff wrote earlier this week about roadside strip searches. Today’s post is about strip searches of arrestees as they are booked into the jail. The longstanding rule regarding searches of […]

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The Court of Appeals just decided State v. Battle, a case about roadside strip searches. It’s an important case for judges, lawyers, and especially officers. A confidential and reliable informant […]

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I’ve bumped into a couple recent cases in which law enforcement officers have requested consent to search a car and have received ambiguous responses. (For a discussion of when officers […]

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When a law enforcement officer is entitled to search a computer for evidence, she typically is entitled to look at every file on the computer, at least briefly. That’s because […]

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