A UNC School of Government Blog
The Supreme Court of North Carolina decided Lovette v. Department of Correction last Friday. The case has nothing to do with Laurence Lovette—the man found guilty of killing UNC student body president Eve Carson—whose case was also recently before our appellate courts (discussed here). Rather, it concerned Clyde Vernon Lovette and fellow petitioner Charles Lynch, … Read more
I’ve had several questions lately about driving slowly, so I took some time this weekend to add a section to my paper on traffic stops on the subject. The new section appears below as today’s blog post, and the complete updated paper is available here. Driving substantially under the posted speed limit is not itself … Read more
3-D printing is in the news this week. You know, 3-D printing, where a machine makes “a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model . . . using an additive process, where successive layers of material [basically, melted plastic] are laid down in different shapes.” It is now possible to 3-D … Read more
It’s time for another update to my sex offender flow chart. The latest version is available here. As in the prior versions, everything to do with sex offender registration is on the front and everything to do with satellite-based monitoring (SBM) is on the back. Here is a summary of the changes in the latest … Read more
In a post here I discussed the procedure a trial judge should follow when a deliberating jury asks to review evidence. In that post I noted that the judge must exercise discretion when responding to the jury’s request. The types of factors that the trial court might consider include: the significance of the evidence; a … Read more
Do law-abiding North Carolina residents have a right to carry a gun openly in public? Generally, yes. Federal constitutional right? The Supreme Court has recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, including handguns, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and that it protects that right from … Read more
Trial courts may ultimately control their calendars, but there certainly is some power-sharing along the way. The constraints on a trial district court’s authority to manage the flow of litigation are particularly significant in impaired driving cases. Indeed, G.S. 20-139.1(e2) requires that implied consent cases in district court be continued until the chemical analyst who analyzed … Read more
The federal government’s “sequester,” a package of across-the-board budget cuts, starts today. Federal criminal justice agencies like the Bureau of Prisons aren’t happy about it. As NPR summarizes, “[c]orrections officers in the federal prison system are bracing for possible staffing cuts and furloughs . . . at a time when . . . inmate crowding … Read more
In State v. Friend, ___ N.C. App. ___, 724 S.E.2d 85 (2012), the Court of Appeals addressed the district court’s authority when, after the court refuses to allow a continuance, the State takes a voluntary dismissal and subsequently refiles the case. In Friend, the State voluntarily dismissed an impaired driving charge after the district court … Read more
As expected, the number of people on post-release supervision (PRS) is on the rise. After Justice Reinvestment, all felons with offense dates on or after December 1, 2011 who serve active time receive PRS. The legislature projected that the addition of PRS for Class F-I felons would increase the number of post-release supervisees from 2,000 … Read more