What We Know (And What We Don’t) About Drug-Impaired Driving
Ask someone to identify an emerging area of interest related to motor vehicle law and chances are the person will mention drugged driving. Indeed, the U.S. Office of National Drug […]
New Resource for Juvenile Defenders
This fall is manual season, and I am excited to announce the release of the 2017 edition of the North Carolina Juvenile Defender Manual. Like our other indigent defense manuals, […]
Defense Counsel Can’t Present an Insanity Defense without the Defendant’s Consent
The court of appeals recently addressed an issue that has divided courts elsewhere: whether defense counsel may present an insanity defense without the defendant’s consent. The court ruled that defense […]
News Roundup
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a United Nations tribunal established to prosecute war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars, was the scene of a dramatic act of […]
Wishing LaToya Well as She Leaves the SOG
[Editor’s note: This post first appeared on the SOG’s civil law blog, On the Civil Side. It is cross-posted here because of the connection between juvenile delinquency and criminal law, and […]
Turkey Pardons
Last week, President Trump pardoned Drumstick, a 36-pound turkey. What’s the legal basis for the annual ritual of a president pardoning a turkey? When did the tradition start? And what […]
News Roundup
As the Los Angeles Times reports, notorious cult leader and convicted murderer Charles Manson died this week of natural causes at the age of 83. Manson had spent the past […]
IDS Update with Tom Maher
For today’s post, I conducted a short interview with Tom Maher, the executive director of the Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS), the statewide agency in North Carolina that oversees […]
Trial Preparation Taints Eyewitnesses’ In-Court Identification, Leads to Reversal of Murder Conviction
Last week, the court of appeals reversed a defendant’s conviction for first-degree murder. That doesn’t happen every day, so let’s unpack the case. The central issue concerns two eyewitnesses’ in-court […]
News Roundup
A California man with connections to North Carolina, Kevin Janson Neal, killed five people and wounded eight others in a shooting spree in Northern California this week. After killing his […]