If you haven’t heard about them already, you should know about two fantastic new publications by School of Government faculty members.
The first is Bob Farb’s paper on Maryland v. Shatzer, the Supreme Court’s recent Miranda case that I mentioned briefly here. The Court held that after a suspect invokes his right to counsel, police must stop questioning him but may try again after a 14-day break in custody. Unfortunately, the opinion leaves several very important questions unanswered, such as whether the 14-day rule applies to suspects who are held in pretrial detention, whether an officer who is rebuffed a second time after a break in custody may try again after another 14 days, and whether police may question a defendant who is released from custody but is re-arrested on suspicion of a new crime within 14 days. Bob’s paper addresses each of those questions in his usual comprehensive manner. The paper’s a must-read for everyone, including officers, and it is a free download, available here.
The second is David Lawrence’s new edition of his book Public Records Law for North Carolina Local Governments. You can learn more here, or look at the table of contents here. Why would a criminal lawyer care about the Public Records Law? Because in more and more cases, defense attorneys are trying to use the public records law to obtain information about officers and police procedures that isn’t available through criminal discovery. Chapter 8 of the book is all about law enforcement and jail records, and discusses the scope of the law’s exception for records of criminal investigations. This book isn’t free, but it may belong in your library: I use my copy of the previous edition regularly, and I’m looking forward to getting the new edition.