Recent blog posts - 288 of 396

Drug trafficking offenses can lead to really long sentences, and not just because of the special minimums and maximums that apply to those crimes. Consider this example: My husband and […]

My recent paper (here) on the use of remote testimony in criminal cases involving forensic analysts was written in part because of the flood of interest in legislative solutions to […]

The top story of the week may be the impending repeal of the Racial Justice Act. On Wednesday, the House voted 77-39, mostly along party lines, in favor of the […]

Author’s note: This post has been updated since its initial publication. The original version overlooked G.S. 15A-1340.11(7), a statute that is clearly relevant to the discussion. Do old (as in, […]

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? […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]