Nystagmus in the Courts
Jurisprudence over whether officers may testify about defendants’ horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) in impaired driving trials has failed to follow a smooth path. In fact, one could fairly note that […]
Supreme Court Rejects “De Minimis” Extension of a Traffic Stop to Deploy a Drug Dog
Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Rodriguez v. United States, an important traffic stop case that changes North Carolina law as it pertains to certain drug dog sniffs, and perhaps other […]
DAC’s Auditing Authority
Many of you have received one of those letters: a notice from the N.C. Department of Public Safety, Division of Adult Correction (DAC), Section of Combined Records, seeking “clarification” of […]
Hair Analysis Under a Microscope
Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a story that begins as follows: The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic […]
News Roundup
Partisan judicial elections may be returning to North Carolina. House Bill 8, which passed its second reading with a 64-49 vote, mostly along party lines, would make appellate court elections […]
We are NOT Ferguson
Being married to me is hard. My husband makes an off-hand comment about how the city must need money since the police are pulling people over left and right for […]
How Many Charges Can One Charging Document Contain?
How many charges can be placed on a single charging document, such as a citation, an arrest warrant, or an indictment? Old hands use the rule of thumb, no more […]
Does a DWI Conviction Bar a Person from Possessing a Gun?
The maximum punishment for driving while impaired in violation of G.S. 20-138.1 increased from two to three years in 2011. As a result, defendants convicted of misdemeanor DWI and sentenced […]
Sentencing Whiteboard: Extending Probation
Today’s post is a video explaining the rules for extending probation in North Carolina. It covers the two different types of extensions, and answers the question of how many times a case […]
News Roundup
Around here, the biggest news item this week was the shooting of Walter Scott by North Charleston, South Carolina police officer Michael Slager. Scott, who is black, ran from a […]