North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Supreme Court on December 6, 2019.

If you type "miranda" into the search box on this blog, it will return more than 50 posts covering a wide range of related topics: the meaning of custody, deficient warnings, knowing and voluntary waivers, ambiguous assertion of rights, special rules for juveniles, readvising and reinterviewing, public safety exceptions, and many, many others. But I was stumped recently by a deceptively simple question that I had not heard before, and did not come up in those results: what if the defendant's lawyer is present? Does an in-custody defendant still have to be advised of his Miranda rights before he can be questioned by police? I did some digging, and the case law on this issue genuinely surprised me.

After 12 years at the School of Government, I have accepted a position at the North Carolina Department of Justice. I’ll be leading the Special Prosecutions and Law Enforcement Section within the Criminal Division. I am looking forward to a new challenge and to the opportunity to work with wonderful new colleagues. At the same time, I am profoundly grateful for my time at the School of Government. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some parts of my work here that I have especially cherished.

As the News Roundup previously has noted, Charles Ray Finch was released from North Carolina prison earlier this year after serving more than 40 years for a murder that he did not commit.  This week the News & Observer reported that Finch has filed a federal lawsuit against Wilson County, Sheriff Calvin Woodard Jr., two former Wilson County deputies, and two staffers with the SBI.  According to the N&O, the suit alleges that deputies with the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, then led by W. Robin Pridgen, organized the 1976 robbery that resulted in store owner Richard Holloman’s murder and then framed Finch for the crime.  Keep reading for more news.

This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on December 3, 2019. Appeal of district court’s denial of defendant’s motion to enter judgment on PJC was […]

The Court of Appeals recently held in State v. Summers that a defendant has no right to appeal when deferred prosecution probation is revoked.

The United States Supreme Court’s 2019 term is well underway, and several criminal law cases are on the docket. Listed below are the principal criminal law cases currently before the court, with a link to the docket entry for each case, followed by the Questions Presented.

Now that the North Carolina General Assembly has adjourned for the remainder of the year and most criminal law legislation has taken effect (which is often December 1 each year), it’s time to take stock of what passed this session. You can read summaries of all of the criminal law and related legislation here. Each summary provides a brief description of the act in question along with a link to the text of the act and, where available, links to blogs my colleagues and I wrote. As usual, the legislation spans a range of topics.

With the short holiday week, the News Roundup comes a few days early.  We hope our readers have a safe and happy holiday.  We’ll be back to blogging on Monday.  Keep reading for the latest in criminal law and Thanksgiving news.

North Carolina sits four days away from implementation of the most significant change to juvenile court jurisdiction since the inception of the juvenile delinquency system 100 years ago. Beginning on December 1, 2019, most offenses alleged to have been committed by 16- and 17-year-olds will begin under juvenile jurisdiction. G.S. 7B-1501(7)b, G.S. 7B-1604(b). This change will shift the procedures that law enforcement must follow when processing 16- and 17-year-olds for these now juvenile offenses from criminal procedures to juvenile procedures. The good news, as Jeff Ledford, Chief of Police in Shelby, N.C., put it—if an officer knows how to take a 13-year-old into custody today, that officer knows how to take a 16- or 17-year-old into custody on December 1^st.  This blog provides three key tips for law enforcement to follow and links to a short training video and job aid developed specifically for law enforcement training on raise the age.