A UNC School of Government Blog
The first post in this series discussed State v. Taylor. This one recounts the what not to do lessons from last week’s court of appeals’ decision in State v. Petty . The defendant in Petty was charged on April 28, 2006 with impaired driving. He moved to dismiss the charges pursuant to State v. Knoll, … Read more
One of my colleagues recently tipped me off to a great article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Jennifer G. Clarke entitled Perinatal Care for Incarcerated Patients: A 25-Year-Old Woman Pregnant in Jail. 305 JAMA 923 (2011). I wish I could share the full article but it does not appear to … Read more
Yesterday, in United States v. Portillo-Munoz, the Fifth Circuit held that illegal immigrants do not have Second Amendment rights. The defendant in the case was charged with being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5). He argued that the statute was unconstitutional, but the court concluded that … Read more
I was walking my dog this weekend when a neighbor stopped me for one of those “hey, you’re a lawyer” conversations that always seems to involve an area of law about which I know nothing. Except this time, the question was about criminal law. The specific question was this: John Edwards claims that the money … Read more
The General Assembly continues to move swiftly. Its budget is on the Governor’s desk, so legislators have turned their attention to other matters. For example, S 756, which would eliminate unsecured bond as a possible condition of release, and which would impose several limitations on pretrial release programs, passed the Senate and has moved to … Read more
If I were to compile guidance for law enforcement officers and judges on “what not to do” in an impaired driving case, I’d be sure to include excerpts from two cases decided by the court of appeals this week: State v. Petty and State v. Taylor. Let’s start with Taylor, reserving discussion of Petty for … Read more
The Court of Appeals released several criminal law opinions yesterday. One that caught my eye was State v. Merrell, __ N.C. App. __ (2011). In a nutshell, the defendant was an alcoholic who lived with his sister and her family. He began sexually abusing his niece, in a variety of ways, when she was nine. … Read more
In State v. Bowden, 193 N.C. App. 597 (2008), disc. rev. improvidently allowed, 363 N.C. 621 (2009), and Jones v. Keller, 364 N.C. 249 (2010), our appellate courts considered the sentence length and sentence credits applicable to a group of inmates with offense dates from the 1970s. They committed their crimes at a time when … Read more
The last batch of opinions from the court of appeals included a really interesting constructive possession case.The facts of State v. Slaughter, __ N.C. App. __ (2011), are as follows. Officers executed a search warrant at a mobile home. The defendant did not live in the home but was present at the time of the … Read more
According to the News and Observer, plea negotiations regarding former Senator John Edwards have not resulted in an agreement, and Edwards “was indicted today [editor’s note: literally, an hour or so ago] on charges of conspiracy and false statements and campaign law violations.” The paper previously ran a detailed analysis of some of the legal … Read more