Recent Blog Posts Page 277 on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

A defense lawyer from another state recently asked me if it was possible to get probation for involuntary manslaughter in North Carolina. It is apparently possible but uncommon in his […]

Tucked into the 2013 North Carolina budget bill is a provision imposing new court costs for expert witnesses who testify about chemical or forensic analyses at trial. Specifically, the new […]

The Ninth Circuit recently decided a case that addresses a question I’ve been asked several times: may the police answer a seized cell phone? The answer may depend on the […]

Is it reasonable to believe that the car an impaired driver is operating contains evidence of the DWI? That’s the question law enforcement officers must answer in a post-Gant world […]

There’s a pretty strong argument that the state court system is underfunded. And there’s a pretty strong argument that the federal court system is underfunded. The Judicial Conference of the […]

In State v. Cooper, issued last week, the Court of Appeals reversed the defendant’s conviction for first-degree murder of his wife and ordered a new trial. The case has drawn […]

Trial lawyers love a good gotcha moment and this method of impeachment–by prior inconsistent statement–presents lots of opportunities for that. Proving that a witness previously made statements inconsistent with his […]

Special probation, commonly referred to as a split sentence, is a powerful sentencing tool. It allows the judge to impose a mix of imprisonment and probation that can achieve multiple […]

When the police seize a gun in the course of an investigation, what becomes of it after any resulting court case concludes? A recent legislative enactment has changed the most […]

Eleanor Aker, the print shop operator at the court of appeals, has retired. Ms. Aker is 86 and worked for the state for nearly 40 years. Chief Justice Parker presented […]