Like most complicated legislation, the Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA) was less than perfectly clear as originally written. Earlier this week (July 16, 2012) the governor signed House Bill 1021, Justice […]
Five years ago, the General Assembly authorized judges to require that defendants placed on probation for a Level One or Level Two impaired driving offense abstain from consuming alcohol for […]
In State v. King, the N.C. Supreme Court recently clarified the rules regarding the admissibility of repressed memory evidence. In King the defendant was charged with sexually assaulting his daughter, […]
Over the past several days, the national news has been dominated by the issuance of an investigative report about the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal, a topic I previously […]
I wrote previously (here) about the post–Justice Reinvestment rules for determining whether a defendant is eligible for a conditional discharge under G.S. 90-96. Those rules are complicated, but my sense […]
The Fourth Circuit recently decided United States v. Sowards, an interesting case about a traffic stop. The case arose when an experienced traffic enforcement officer stopped the defendant on I-77 […]
Senate Bill 105, which passed both chambers of the General Assembly overwhelmingly and appears certain to become law (either with the Governor’s signature or because of the passage of time […]
In State v. Huerta, the court of appeals recently reaffirmed its controlled substance “combination decisions.” Here’s what happened. Huerta was convicted of, among other things, trafficking by possession of more […]
Jeff’s away and has left me in charge of the news roundup. So there’ll be no Gizmodo stories this week. (I’m still figuring out how to work my iPhone.) Fortunately, […]
Concluding that current State criminal statutes “do not sufficiently recognize the increased danger to the public and do not sanction appropriately acts of terrorism,” S.L. 2012-38, the General Assembly recently […]