Sixth Circuit Holds that Chalking Vehicle Tires is a Fourth Amendment Search
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last week that city parking enforcement officers’ use of chalk to mark the tires of parked vehicles to track how long […]
No Kids in Court?
WRAL reports that a district court judge told a Johnston County woman not to bring her 3-month-old baby to court. Can a judge do that?
Overcriminalization & Ordinance Violations as Crimes: A County-Level Breakdown
In a post here, I noted that under state law, counties, cities, towns, and metropolitan sewerage districts have authority to create crimes through local ordinances. This is a somewhat controversial […]
News Roundup
Late last week U.S. Attorney General William Barr publicly released a redacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. […]
Federal-State Sentence Interaction: Concurrent and Consecutive Sentences
When a defendant is sentenced for both state and federal crimes, things can get complicated. There are a few traps for the unwary, even when everyone (prosecutor, defendant, and judge) […]
Revoking Licenses for Failure to Pay: Is Change on the Horizon?
The revocation of driver’s licenses for unpaid court costs and fines has been a hot topic of late. Much of the focus has centered around the spiral of debt that […]
Who Can Access a Delinquency or Undisciplined Juvenile Court Record?
I have had the pleasure of working here at the School of Government for eight months now. In that time I have gotten some interesting questions about North Carolina’s delinquency […]
Big Data and Criminal Justice
The debate about the criminal justice system increasingly is driven by empirical studies. Phil Dixon wrote thoughtfully last week about a new analysis of 700,000 drug arrests conducted by UNC […]
News Roundup
This week federal prosecutors announced that they have charged 60 people, including 31 doctors, pharmacists, and medical professionals, with various offenses arising from an investigation into illegal opioid distribution and […]
Bail Reform in North Carolina: Pretrial Preventative Detention
In this post, part of a series on Bail Reform in North Carolina, I discuss preventative detention of defendants who are too dangerous or who present too great a flight […]