North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

I’ve recently been asked by several people whether it is lawful to require officers to issue a certain number of citations, or to make a certain number of arrests, per […]

When analysts from the Council of State Governments studied North Carolina’s sentencing laws and correctional system, one of their key findings was that revoked probationers account for a lot of […]

Police officers, city and county attorneys, private citizens and others frequently inquire about the circumstances under which the owner of private property may arrange for a vehicle parked on that […]

Regular readers may have noticed that I fell down on the job and didn’t get a post up on Wednesday. Sorry about that! It’s been a busy week with the […]

An indictment defect is a boon for the defense and a disaster for the prosecution. Simply put an indictment is defective when it fails to allege an essential element of […]

Want to frighten your 16 or 17-year-old this Halloween?  Tell her that if she is charged with speeding more than 15 mph over the speed limit, she’ll be arrested and […]

In response to my recent post (here) about waivers of counsel, a number of you emailed asking me to write about forfeiture of the right to counsel. Your wish is […]

Perhaps the biggest criminal law story here in North Carolina this week was the appointment of former court of appeals judge Joe John as the director of the State Crime […]

In a case decided earlier this month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that Maryland v. Craig, which allows certain child abuse victims to testify by way of closed-circuit […]

Under Structured Sentencing, there are two types of non-active sentences: community punishment and intermediate punishment. Intermediate punishment is supervised probation plus at least one of six specific conditions of probation […]