Damage to a Computer
A caller recently asked this: If a defendant throws another person’s computer against the wall and breaks it, can the defendant be charged with the felony of Damaging a Computer? […]
Supreme Court Upholds Taking DNA Upon Arrest
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided a case that one Justice called “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades.” A bare majority of the […]
Avoiding Ignition Interlock by Pleading Guilty
As state crime lab backlogs increase, it takes longer and longer for blood drawn in connection with impaired driving cases to be tested. In some of these cases, the State […]
News Roundup
There were so many important stories in North Carolina this week that I couldn’t pick just one as the headliner. Without further ado: Racial Justice Act Nears Repeal. A House […]
Trial De Novo
Two cases this month from the Court of Appeals, one published and one not, offer different perspectives on the meaning of an appeal for a “trial de novo” in superior […]
Police Use of New Recording Technologies
There’s been quite a buzz lately about Google Glass, a “wearable computer” that looks like a pair of eyeglasses but that uses the lenses as transparent screens to display information […]
Restitution “TBD by the Probation Officer”
May a judge delegate to a probation officer the task of setting the amount of restitution owed to a victim? For several reasons, my standard answer to that recurring question […]
News Roundup
The state Senate passed its budget this week. It’s different from the Governor’s budget and also from the House budget, so nothing is final and there’s plenty of negotiation left […]
The Sniffer
The National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendation that states lower their per se blood alcohol concentrations for impaired driving from 0.08 to 0.05 grabbed headlines last week. But the BAC reduction […]
Are Mug Shots Public Records?
[Editor’s Note: My colleague Frayda Bluestein is the author of this post, which she wrote for the School of Government’s blog about local government law. Because she’s not a regular […]