On June 18th the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ohio v. Clark, 576 U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 2173 (2015), holding that a child abuse victim’s statements to his preschool teachers […]
The highly publicized escape of two murderers from a New York prison came to an end this week as Richard Matt was shot and killed and David Sweat was shot […]
Not many sentences come from the aggravated range—four percent in Fiscal Year 2013/14, according to the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. But when you use the aggravated range, […]
Beginning tomorrow, mopeds must be registered with the Division of Motor Vehicles to be lawfully operated on the state’s roadways. This post addresses several questions that have arisen regarding this […]
My colleague Frayda Bluestein recently wrote a post with the above title on the School of Government’s local government blog. Her post begins as follows: In North Carolina, it is a […]
There were several major criminal law stories this week, none of them especially cheery. Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had his sentencing hearing. The result was not in doubt, as […]
A judge who issues an emergency or ex parte domestic violence protective order must order the defendant to surrender all firearms in his care, custody or control if the judge […]
The United States Supreme Court just decided a capital case about intellectual disability, formerly known as mental retardation. In some ways, it’s an “error correction” case that doesn’t break new […]
Last year I posted a chart summarizing the proper place of confinement (jail, prison, or Statewide Misdemeanant Confinement Program) for various types of imprisonment. The chart covers active sentences, split […]
The court of appeals just upheld North Carolina’s cyberbullying statute over a First Amendment challenge. The result is especially noteworthy because it contrasts with a ruling last year in a […]