A UNC School of Government Blog
In general, a court only has jurisdiction to act on a probation case until the period of probation expires. There is a limited exception to that rule in G.S. 15A-1344(f). Under that law, the court may act on the case after it expires if the State filed a violation report with the clerk before expiration. … Read more
Evidence Rule 801(d) sets out a hearsay exception for “Admissions by a Party-Opponent.” If you’re not clear on that rule, read on. The rule says that a statement is admissible under this exception if it is “offered against a party” and is (A) his or her own statement, in an individual or representative capacity; (B) … Read more
The biggest news of the week may be that Frank Perry, the Secretary of the Department of Public Safety, has authorized a one-drug protocol for lethal injection, replacing the three-drug “cocktail” system previously in effect. WRAL has the AP story here. The story states that the new protocol will “slightly loosen the legal knot that’s … Read more
The first two posts in this series (here and here) discussed opinions from state supreme courts in Arizona and Minnesota considering, post-McNeely v. Missouri, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013), whether a suspect’s submission to implied consent testing was voluntary consent within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. This post discusses why that sort of analysis is … Read more
Yesterday’s post discussed challenges to implied consent laws raised by defendants following the Supreme Court’s decision last spring in Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013). The post summarized the Arizona Supreme Court’s holding that, independent of the state’s implied consent law, the Fourth Amendment requires an arrestee’s consent to be voluntary to justify a … Read more
The United States Supreme Court held last term in Missouri v. McNeeIy, 133 S. Ct. 1552 (2013), that the natural dissipation of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every impaired driving case sufficient to excuse the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. McNeely’s holding comported with the analysis that the North Carolina … Read more
I field a lot of calls from prosecutors, defenders, and judges about evidence issues. Character evidence is one area that accounts for a lot of those calls. And no wonder. The rules are complicated and almost impossible to keep straight. The basic rule is that character evidence can’t be admitted to show propensity. Thus, evidence … Read more
We’ve long believed that the North Carolina Criminal Law Blog is the best, but now we have proof. A reader pointed me to this list of blogs run by law professors. Our traffic would put us among the top 25 blogs on the list. More significantly, we would be the only single-state blog in the … Read more
Each Halloween also seems to bring a wave of news stories related to sex offenders. There apparently isn’t evidence to back up the concern, but some jurisdictions have laws prohibiting registered offenders from participating in Halloween activities. In Missouri, for example, all registrants were required to remain indoors between 5:00 and 10:30 p.m. on October … Read more
Counting the number of sections in a chapter of the General Statutes is pretty dull work. But doing it over and over again in order to see the growth in a single chapter over time may yield interesting results. In preparation for a panel discussion about overcriminalization this evening, I counted the number of sections … Read more