Recent blog posts - 271 of 398

The top story of the week concerns Patrick Cannon, who was the mayor of Charlotte until he was arrested Wednesday on federal corruption charges. He resigned his post, as the […]

We’re holding a seminar on professionalism and ethics for judges at the School of Government next week so I’ve got judicial canons on my mind.  Below are five ethical rules […]

Or is it addendums? Take your pick. Regardless, today’s post covers some of the issues that arise when a probation officer files an addendum to a probation violation report. I’ll […]

I’ve been married to a man for sixteen years.  That makes me an expert in men’s dress.  If the occasion is formal—an important meeting at work, a cocktail party, a […]

In this, my last post in a long series on hearsay exceptions, I’ll address the Rule 804 exception for statements against penal interest. Rule 804(b)(3) creates a hearsay exception for […]

I’m traveling today so I’ll round up the news a bit more briefly than usual: Court of appeals remands lethal injection case. The News and Observer reports here that the […]

The decades-old state supreme court decision in State v. Knoll, 322 N.C. 535 (1988), dismissing charges against three impaired driving defendants, is confusing.  For starters, the Knoll court’s decision hinged […]

Last session, the General Assembly added a new subsection to the principal pretrial release statute, G.S. 15A-534. The new provision took effect on December 1, 2013, and has proven to […]

When a person is convicted and sentenced, the sentence generally starts right away. G.S. 15A-1353(a). The judge can delay the start of the sentence, as discussed in this prior post, […]

Rule 804 contains five hearsay exceptions that apply when the declarant is unavailable. I addressed one of them—the residual exception—in a prior post. Another one of the five—statements of family […]