Recent Blog Posts Page 321 on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Under the new Crawford confrontation clause test, testimonial hearsay statements by declarants who do not testify at trial may not be admitted unless the declarant is unavailable and there has […]

A caller recently asked me whether it is a crime to use gang signs. First, some background. According to one gang expert, “each gang has their own gang hand signs […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]