A UNC School of Government Blog
A wise man once said that “[e]xcept for death penalty cases, no sentence requires more documentation” than a sentence imposed for the misdemeanor offense of driving while impaired. Ben F. Loeb, Jr. and James C. Drennan, Motor Vehicle Law and The Law of Impaired Driving in North Carolina 81 (Institute of Government 2000 ed.). As … Read more
Normally, field sobriety tests are administered before an arrest is made, as part of an officer’s investigation into a possible DWI. In that case, it’s clear that the officer need not read the driver his Miranda rights before administering the tests. The driver isn’t in custody — he’s just the subject of a traffic stop … Read more
Suppose that A, who has HIV and knows it, has unprotected sex with B, who doesn’t have HIV. A doesn’t warn B. Has A committed a crime? Yes. At a minimum, A has failed to abide by communicable disease control measures. Under G.S. 130A-144(f), “[a]ll persons” are required to comply with control measures. The control … Read more
What a week! The news stories just kept coming. It started off over the weekend, when the News and Observer published this interesting article about upcoming appellate arguments over the state’s “born alive” rule. As the article notes, “[t]he state Supreme Court has said that to convict someone for murder under common law, the victim … Read more
Yesterday, I taught a class on the use of Rule 404(b) evidence in sexual assault cases. During the class, we discussed the general rule against admitting the bare fact of a defendant’s prior conviction. As Jessie discussed here, the basic idea is that even when Rule 404(b) evidence is admissible, if the bad act at … Read more
Jeff previously blogged about multiple assault convictions based on the same conduct, distinguishing double jeopardy issues from statutory interpretation issues. In this post, I will hone in on the statutory interpretation aspect of the analysis. G.S. 14-32.4(b) provides: “Unless the conduct is covered under some other provision of law providing greater punishment, any person who … Read more
According to data from the Division of Community Corrections, 1270 probationers had their probation revoked in December 2010. Of those, 232 revocations were based on new crimes. I’ve written before about some of the issues associated with new criminal charges as a violation of probation, a post you can read here. To sum that post … Read more
The automatism defense is discussed briefly on page 14 of the current version of North Carolina Crimes. Because I’ve had a couple of questions about it, I thought I’d write about it in a little more detail. Automatism is the “absence of consciousness[, which] not only precludes the existence of any specific mental state, but … Read more
The hottest topic of the week — aside from the gripping Duke/UNC basketball game on Wednesday night — was certainly the hearing in Forsyth County about the constitutionality of the Racial Justice Act, G.S. 15A-2010 et seq. According to this News and Observer report, the state argued that the Act is “too sweeping to apply … Read more
In my first post on this topic, I set the stage for a discussion about the constitutionality of remote two-way testimony. In my second post, I explored the legal authority on that issue. In this final post, I will introduce two procedures might allow the State to achieve some of the benefits of remote testimony, … Read more