Recent blog posts

Thieves broke into a gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris early Sunday morning, stole some of France’s priceless crown jewels, and escaped on scooters, as reported by the BBC and the NYT. Around 9:30 a.m. (local time), shortly after the museum had opened to visitors, four masked thieves used a vehicle-mounted electric ladder to gain access to a balcony overlooking the River Seine. Two thieves cut through a window with a disc cutter – setting off security alarms – and entered the Galerie d’Apollon, where they threatened security guards and stole items from two display cases. The thieves snatched eight objects, including a sapphire necklace, an emerald necklace, and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III. Read on for more criminal law news.

Law enforcement officers regularly work with Confidential Informants (CIs) when investigating organized crime or building cases against individuals in leadership positions within criminal enterprises. CIs are most commonly involved in drug cases, ranging from high-level trafficking to street-level dealing, but they may also play a role in the investigation of other crimes such as bribery, fraud, or firearms trafficking.

When cases involving CIs make it to North Carolina courts, difficult questions often arise as to how to balance the state’s interest in maintaining the confidentiality of the informant’s identity with the defendant’s rights to a fair trial and open-file discovery. These questions go beyond the traditional binary of whether the CI’s identity should or should not be revealed to the defense. See Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53 (1957). Especially as technology evolves and CI activity is regularly captured through audio/video recordings, judges must navigate challenging decisions regarding precisely what should be turned over to the defense.

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions released by the Supreme Court of North Carolina on October 17, 2025.

This post summarizes published criminal law and related cases released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during September 2025. Cases of potential interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available here.

This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the Court of Appeals of North Carolina released on October 15, 2025.

NBC has this article up about the top national criminal law story of the moment. It notes that “[a] federal grand jury indicted former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday, making him the third critic of President Donald Trump to face criminal charges in recent weeks.” The article goes on to state that “Bolton was indicted in federal court in Maryland, where he lives and where prosecutors have been investigating whether he improperly retained classified materials after his acrimonious departure from the first Trump administration. The indictment charges him with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information.” The transmission counts apparently are based on Bolton sending diary-style materials to two relatives. Bolton’s legal team contends that he is innocent and has been unfairly targeted based on his acrimonious relationship with President Trump.

Child welfare records maintained by a department of social services (DSS) contain sensitive information that parties in various proceedings are often interested in seeing. A complex web of state and federal law governs the disclosure of these records – more than I can cover here. For purposes of this post, it’s sufficient to know that G.S. 108A-80 is a broadly applicable confidentiality statute that applies to DSS and covers client information generally. Absent limited statutory exceptions, G.S. 108A-80(a) prohibits disclosure of information related to individuals who apply for or receive public assistance or social services, including child welfare services.

Child welfare information is also subject to an additional set of confidentiality restrictions under Chapter 7B of the North Carolina General Statutes. For example, G.S. 7B-302 makes information that is obtained by DSS related to a juvenile’s alleged abuse, neglect, or dependency (A/N/D) confidential. Similarly, G.S. 7B-2901(b) requires DSS to maintain confidential records of juveniles it has in its custody. Both statutes provide exceptions to the confidentiality requirement.

This post explores how the exceptions in G.S. 7B-302 and 7B-2901(b) apply when a party—either in a North Carolina civil case where DSS is not a party or in a criminal or delinquency matter—wants DSS child welfare records about someone other than themselves. Note that in this post I use the term ‘DSS records’ to refer to child welfare records maintained by DSS, including those from juvenile A/N/D proceedings.

Earlier this month, the School of Government’s Criminal Justice Innovation Lab released our final report evaluating the Burlington Police Department’s mental health co-responder program. This report is the culmination of a two-year partnership between the School, the Burlington Police Department, RHA Health Services, and the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police. The evaluation speaks to the impact of the co-responder program on the police department, the clients served, and the broader community. We also included recommendations on data collection for other agencies that may be interested to conduct similar evaluations. This post summarizes the findings and the recommendations.

Under G.S. 14-34.10, it is a felony for any person to discharge a firearm within any occupied enclosure, such as a motor vehicle, with the intent to incite fear in another. G.S. 14-34.10. In State v. Jenkins, No. COA24-889 (N.C. Ct. App. Aug. 6, 2025), the Court of Appeals held that the plain language of this statute was satisfied by a defendant who fired a gun from inside his car, injuring a victim in another car. More recently, in State v. Hardaway, No. COA24-538 (N.C. Ct. App. Oct. 1, 2025), the Court of Appeals, over a doubtful concurrence, found itself bound by Jenkins. This post considers the statutory construction of G.S. 14-34.10 in Jenkins and Hardaway.

I recently completed a new paper on contracts between cities and sheriffs for law enforcement services. It is available here.

Dozens of North Carolina municipalities have decided not to operate their own police departments, and instead have entered into contracts with their local sheriffs’ offices for designated levels of law enforcement services. There are plusses and minuses to such arrangements, which the paper details. It also notes some of the terms that parties considering such contracts may wish to include, and discusses the formalities required for each side to enter into such agreements.