A UNC School of Government Blog
A couple of months ago, the court of appeals decided State v. McDowell, __ N.C. App. __, 715 S.E.2d 602 (2011). The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder notwithstanding his claim of self-defense. A passage from the court’s opinion caught my eye: Dave Cloutier, an expert in use-of-force science and self-defense tactics, testified that, given … Read more
Charlotte’s got banking, Asheville’s got mountains, and Eastern North Carolina has the beach, but right now, the Triangle has criminal justice stories in spades. In Orange County, the taking of testimony has begun in the Laurence Lovette/Eve Carson trial. The News and Observer story here includes an interesting discussion of the feasibility of emergency PINs … Read more
The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission recently posted online the new felony sentencing grid effective for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2011. The chart is available here. There are no changes to the front of the grid (the ranges of permissible minimum sentences), but the numbers on the back are increased … Read more
Suppose a person who speaks only Spanish is stopped on suspicion of impaired driving by two officers, Officer A and Officer B. Officer A speaks and understands only English. Officer B is fluent in English and Spanish. Officer B asks the defendant if he has been drinking. The defendant states, in Spanish, that he drank … Read more
In connection with some teaching that I have coming up, I’ve prepared a short outline summarizing the law of interrogation. It’s available as a PDF here. It covers voluntariness, Miranda, and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, plus the recording requirements of G.S. 15A-211, including the statutory amendments that took effect on December 1. I … Read more
At the start of the fall semester, the Daily Tar Heel reported that Chapel Hill and Carrboro police officers have combined forces with UNC campus police in an effort to ramp up enforcement of laws prohibiting underage drinking. The article states that undercover operations are among the tactics employed by the town’s Alcohol Law Enforcement … Read more
I didn’t round up the news last week because of the Thanksgiving holiday, so I’m awash in interesting stories today. Perhaps the biggest story is that the General Assembly has voted to amend the Racial Justice Act in a way that would effectively repeal the law. The News and Observer has the story here. The … Read more
It’s December 1, and a lot of new laws (the News & Observer counts 35) come into effect today. Among them is the Justice Reinvestment Act—or at least portions of it. To help with the transition, I’ve created a Justice Reinvestment resource page that includes links to “cheat sheets” summarizing the law (including relevant effective … Read more
Criminal defendants, especially those sentenced to long prison terms, sometimes try to attack their convictions and sentences by claiming that their trial lawyers provided ineffective assistance of counsel. The state sometimes seeks trial lawyers’ help in answering these claims, and trial attorneys may want to help in order to avoid findings of ineffectiveness. At the … Read more
Last year, the Onion (my favorite news satire outfit) ran an article headlined “Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text.” It’s a pretty funny take on modern society’s overreliance on things like bullet points and YouTube to process information. The headline made me think of G.S. 90-96. As most readers know, G.S. 90-96 allows … Read more