North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

In a post here, I listed my top five indictment errors. The number one error was misstating the victim’s name in an indictment charging larceny or a related crime interfering […]

There was some serious legal news this week, like the issuance of the Supreme Court’s recent Brady decision, Smith v. Cain, and the Court’s decision to grant certiorari in the […]

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. A recent case from the court of appeals provides a nice opportunity for an update. […]

Part I of this post ended by noting that, like the racing forfeiture provisions in G.S. 20-141.3—and unlike the DWI seizure and forfeiture laws—the new felony speeding to elude seizure […]

My nomination for catchiest short title of the 2011 legislative session goes to House Bill 427, enrolled and chaptered as S.L. 2011-271, and short-titled “Run and You’re Done.”  The aptly […]

As a general rule, and subject to local bond policy, the law gives judicial officials a great deal of discretion to determine the appropriate conditions of pretrial release. In some […]

The new year has begun with a bang: lots of criminal law news this week. For example, the General Assembly considered Wednesday night whether to override the Governor’s veto of […]

NCAWARE is an acronym for the North CArolina WArrant REpository. It is the computer system that is used by judicial officials, usually magistrates, to create criminal process documents such as […]

With new legislation placing more inmates in the county jail—and with budgets continuing to be tight—I’ve been getting a lot of questions about jail fees. I’ve written about them in […]

In my first post in this series, I addressed the issue of who is entitled to conditions of pretrial release. In this post, I’ll address who can set conditions and […]