FAQ on PRS
There are almost 7,000 people on post-release supervision in North Carolina today. That’s up from around 2,000 in 2011, before the law was changed to require post-release supervision for all […]
Convicted of DWI? Go Directly to Jail.
The General Assembly just made it a whole lot easier to determine whether a defendant imprisoned for a misdemeanor DWI conviction will serve his or her sentence in jail or […]
Entrapment
A national, empirical study of defenses found that the defense of entrapment arose in just 0.08% of cases, usually “to little avail.” Stephen G. Valdes, Frequency and Success: An Empirical […]
News Roundup
The headline news this week is that the General Assembly has agreed on a budget, and Governor McCrory has signed it. It is here. Among other provisions, it moves the […]
Asserting the Fifth Amendment in Court and the Granting of Immunity to a Witness
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are commonly known as the Bill of Rights and were ratified on December 15, 1791. It is remarkable how many of these […]
An Update on Places Sex Offenders Can’t Go
An amended statute and a recent case improve our understanding of places sex offenders cannot live and go in North Carolina. First, the statute. Under G.S. 14-208.16, a registered sex […]
Window Tinting Requirements
Driving a vehicle on a street, highway, or public vehicular area in North Carolina in violation of the window tinting restrictions set forth in G.S. 20-127 is a Class 3 […]
State v. Jackson and Pedestrian Evasion
The court of appeals recently decided a case about when a pedestrian’s efforts to avoid an officer provide reasonable suspicion for an investigative stop. The type of encounter involved is […]
News Roundup
Jeff is away today, so I will round up the week’s legal news on his behalf. UNC-Chapel Hill professor killed. This story broke last week, but campus is still reeling […]
Resentencing on Eighth Amendment Grounds
Some inmates are serving long sentences for older crimes that would receive a much shorter sentence under today’s law. It is clear at this point that they cannot have today’s […]