A UNC School of Government Blog
The fallout from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Arizona v. Gant, see my initial post here, has been fast and furious. Most questions I’ve received have been about how it applies to existing and past cases, not to future searches. Here are a couple of common questions and answers. 1. Does Gant apply to … Read more
The Supreme Court decided Arizona v. Gant yesterday. The opinion is available here, and a news article about the case is here. It’s a pretty significant Fourth Amendment case, so let’s unpack it a little bit, and please excuse the long post. When an officer lawfully arrests a suspect, the officer may search the suspect … Read more
An interesting article appeared yesterday in the New York Times. You can read it here, but the gist of it is that the federal government and about 15 states are now collecting DNA from people who are charged with certain crimes, usually felonies, even if the individuals are not convicted. As the article observes, this … Read more
The Court of Appeals decided two Miranda cases last week: In re J.D.B, available here, and State v. Rooks, available here. The former is a very close juvenile case that produced three separate opinions. I’ll save my thoughts about it for after we hear from the Supreme Court of North Carolina. But there’s an argument … Read more
Several recent inquiries have been variants of the following question: can an officer administer field sobriety tests during a routine traffic stop? In other words, if an officer has reasonable suspicion that a driver has committed a traffic violation, and has a hunch, not rising to the level of reasonable suspicion, that the driver is … Read more
In 2007, the General Assembly enacted the Eyewitness Identification Reform Act, G.S. 15A-284.50 et seq. The heart of the Act is G.S. 15A-284.52, which lays out rules for conducting lineups, whether live, i.e., involving the actual suspect and several other fillers, or by photo array, i.e., involving a picture of the suspect and several other … Read more
The Court of Appeals released a number of opinions yesterday. Bob Farb will undoubtedly release his inimitable summaries shortly — to sign up to receive the summaries by email, go here — but I wanted to call attention to one case right away, as it should be of interest to officers, prosecutors, and defense lawyers … Read more
The Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, recently decided a very interesting Miranda case. Garner v. Mitchell, available here, is a capital case. The defendant stole a woman’s purse, took a taxi to her house, robbed it, and set it on fire to conceal his fingerprints, killing five of the six children who were sleeping in … Read more
According to a News and Observer story available here, MySpace has provided the Attorney General’s office with a list of 2,116 registered North Carolina sex offenders who were on MySpace. (You can read more about this in the AG’s press release, here.) The SBI has shared the list with all 100 sheriffs, and the SBI’s … Read more
A couple of sessions ago, the General Assembly enacted G.S. 15A-211, which requires that custodial interrogations in homicide cases be recorded. The idea is to “eliminate disputes about interrogations,” id., and particularly, to prevent and record any coercion by law enforcement that might result in a false confession, and to prevent false claims of coercion. … Read more