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It’s been over two years since I recorded my first video blog post. With the help of School of Government multimedia developer Jamar Jones, I prepared another one for today. […]

Whether a suspect refused to submit to a breath test is a hotly contested issue in many impaired driving cases. That determination is critical to two proceedings: the administrative proceeding […]

Rule 404(b) is a rule of inclusion subject to one exception: the evidence must be excluded if its only probative value is to show that the defendant had the propensity […]

I recently finished Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography, My Beloved World. It’s a terrific book and an interesting companion to another outstanding Supreme Court memoir, Justice Clarence Thomas’s My Grandfather’s Son. […]

This week, the General Assembly ratified SB 117, or Lily’s Law, which adds the following provision to the murder statute, G.S. 14-17: “For the purposes of this section, it shall […]

Even the greenest of prosecutors knows to ask it.  And all officers, from rookie to veteran, know how to answer. Rare is the impaired driving case without it. What’s the […]

A couple of this blog’s recent Friday News Roundups have linked offbeat stories about contempt and cellphones. In the first a Michigan judge held himself in contempt and ordered a […]

In this second post on Rule 404(b) evidence [editor’s note: the first post in this occasional series is here], I’ll address a point that sometimes gets overlooked in the admissibility […]

I read an article this morning from the Washington Post about how some inmates are using the online consumer review site Yelp to rate jails and prisons. It’s an interesting […]

Potentially capital federal charges have been filed against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the Boston marathon bombings. The filing of charges led to an initial appearance – in the hospital […]