Recent blog posts

Drunk driving has long been a phrase in the national lexicon of terms related driving and public safety. Over the past decade, a companion term—drugged driving—has entered into common usage […]

I previously posted here about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Chaidez and its holding that Padilla does not apply retroactively. The Court’s ruling meant that lawful permanent resident […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 . . […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]