Recent blog posts - 276 of 402

Is it a crime to attempt to drive while impaired? Consider these facts. Suppose a law enforcement officer sees a person stumble to a car outside of a bar, unlock […]

As I’ve noted in prior posts, some people just want to serve their time in prison. For one reason or another, they do not want to be on probation. For […]

The court of appeals recently expanded the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement, entering a national controversy over the proper scope of the doctrine. This post explains the exception […]

In earlier posts I covered the major Rule 803 hearsay exceptions, for which unavailability is immaterial. Rule 804 contains additional hearsay exceptions, but they only apply when the declarant is […]

In Chapel Hill, the top story is District Attorney Jim Woodall’s decision not to charge former UNC employee Deborah Crowder in connection with the athletic/academic/no-show classes scandal. The Herald Sun […]

You don’t have to attend basic law enforcement training to identify a potential impaired driver.  Plenty of folks without police training could roll off a list of tell-tale signs, including […]

Thousands of defendants are sentenced to unsupervised probation each year. They are often first offenders who have been convicted of not-so-serious crimes, so you don’t read much about them in […]

In a series of posts, I’ve been covering some of the hearsay exceptions that arise most commonly in criminal cases. The residual exceptions make that list. Here is your primer […]

Last week the United States Supreme Court in Fernandez v. California (February 25, 2014) clarified an issue left open in its ruling in Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103 (2006): […]

The SBI is investigating allegations that nude photographs of middle and high school students have been posted on photo-sharing site Instagram without the students’ consent. The investigation began in Wake […]