Ineffective Assistance and Plea Bargaining
The Supreme Court decided two cases last week about ineffective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. The cases, Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, made a big splash in […]
News Roundup
The biggest legal news of the week may be the Supreme Court’s recognition of a right to the effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining in Lafler v. Cooper and […]
State v. Friend: Dismissal and Re-filing of DWI Charges Did Not Violate Defendant’s Constitutional Rights
Jeff wrote here about State v. Fields, ___ N.C. App. ___ (March 6, 2012), a case in which the officer’s observation of the defendant’s vehicle as moving within its lane […]
New Edition of North Carolina Crimes Now Available
Jessie Smith has completely revised and updated the indispensable reference work North Carolina Crimes. The seventh edition is now available for purchase from the School of Government. The book has […]
Court OKs Offensive Collateral Estoppel
In my experience, the mere mention of the terms “res judicata” and “collateral estoppel” in the classroom setting operates like a blast of intellectual air conditioning, causing mental processes to […]
What’s Going on with the Prison Population?
According to the Division of Adult Correction’s (DAC) website, there are about 38,900 people in prison in North Carolina today. That number actually overstates the real population slightly, because it […]
News Roundup
There must be some sort of planetary alignment taking place today: Duke, UNC, and NC State all play in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the new iPad goes on sale, […]
Scope of Consent to Search a Vehicle
Yesterday, I wrote about a pair of recent cases about weaving within a lane of travel. Today, I want to mention another pair of recent cases related to automobiles. Last […]
Weaving and Reasonable Suspicion
Two recent cases from the court of appeals have added to our state’s weaving jurisprudence. One of them is a pretty big deal, as I’ll explain below. But first, the […]
What Is The Date of a Prior Impaired Driving Conviction under G.S. 20-179?
I ended last week’s post by noting that the date on which a prior impaired driving conviction occurs for purposes of the seven-year-look-back period in G.S. 20-179(c)(1)(a) may not be […]