Back and Forth on Visual Estimates of Speed
Can an officer’s visual estimate of a vehicle’s speed, uncorroborated by radar, pacing, or other techniques, support a speeding stop? The Fourth Circuit has been whipsawing back and forth on […]
Fascinating Footnote 3
The most famous footnote in all the world is generally acknowledged to be footnote 4 in United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938). That footnote introduced to […]
News Roundup
There has been plenty of criminal law news this week. 1. Jared Lee Loughner pled guilty on Tuesday in federal district court to 6 counts of murder and 13 counts […]
State v. Sellars: De Minimis Delay for Dog Sniffs Permissible
May an officer prolong a routine traffic stop for four and a half minutes to allow a drug dog to sniff the exterior of the vehicle–even if the officer lacks […]
Probation’s Risk-Needs Assessment Process in a Nutshell
For the past few years, the Section of Community Corrections of the Division of Adult Correction has been transitioning to what they call "evidence-based practices," or EBP. The basic idea is to use series of assessment tools to identify which offenders are mostly likely to reoffend and most in need of programming, and then tailor their supervision accordingly. The process involves some terminology that is probably familiar by now to most probation officers, but may be less familiar to judges, lawyers, and defendants. Today’s post provides an overview of the process probation officers use to sort probationers into different supervision levels and an introduction into what those levels mean for probationers as a practical matter.
Crawford’s Implications on the Bruton Rule
In yesterday’s post I set out the basics of the Bruton rule. Put simply, Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968), held that a defendant’s confrontation clause rights are […]
The Bruton Rule: A Primer
Although recent confrontation clause litigation has focused on the new Crawford rule, the Bruton rule continues to create issues in joint trials of codefendants. In this post I’ll give you […]
News Roundup
Here in Chapel Hill, the big news of the week is that the town’s ban on cell phone use while driving was struck down by a superior court judge. The […]
Driving Mopeds on North Carolina Streets
Every so often, someone asks whether a person must have a driver’s license to drive a moped on a public street in this state. The answer is no—provided that the […]
Revised Drug Trafficking Chart
I mentioned in this prior post that the 2012 Justice Reinvestment clarifications act, S.L. 2012-188, made changes related to drug trafficking. Specifically, the law amended G.S. 15A-1368.1 to make clear that […]