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Two-Way Remote Testimony: Will It Pass Muster? (Part II)

In my last post, I set the stage for a discussion about the constitutionality of remote two-way testimony. In this post I will explore the authority bearing on that question.   Guidance from the United States Supreme Court   The question whether remote two-way testimony satisfies the confrontation clause has not been resolved in a … Read more

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Two-Way Remote Testimony: Will It Pass Muster? (Part I)

Since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), interest has been growing in the use of remote testimony as a method to satisfy the confrontation clause. Crawford held that under the sixth amendment’s confrontation clause, testimonial statements by witnesses who do not appear at trial cannot be admitted … Read more

News Roundup

Several stories appeared this week that may be of interest: 1. The News and Observer ran this article, headlined “Lawyers Take on Net Predator Law,” about defense attorneys’ efforts to challenge G.S. 14-202.5. The statute makes it a felony for a sex offender to “access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender … Read more

License Forfeitures Under G.S. 15A-1331A

North Carolina’s prisons are crowded now, but they were really crowded in the early 1990s. To keep the system functioning, the state ramped up the rules for sentence reduction credit and parole eligibility considerably—to an extent that the average felon was serving less than 20 percent of his or her actual sentence. For some offenders … Read more

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Providing Notice of Implied Consent Rights to Persons Who Do Not Speak English (Part II)

Part I of this post left for another day consideration of whether a defendant who does not speak English may be deemed to have willfully refused a chemical analysis when notice of the implied consent rights is provided only in English and whether providing notice only in English may violate such a defendant’s constitutional rights. … Read more

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Providing Notice of Implied Consent Rights to Persons Who Do Not Speak English (Part I)

Several earlier posts a (here, here, and here) address the requirement that a person arrested for an implied consent offense be informed of statutory implied consent rights before being asked to submit to a chemical analysis. Posts (here and here) address the remedy for failure to adhere to these statutory requirements. None of those posts, … Read more

News Roundup

For me, the biggest recent news is that I broke my finger, had surgery on it, and am now much poorer and all doped up on Percocet. But that might not be such interesting news to you, so check out these recent stories instead: 1. As noted yesterday, the General Assembly is back in session. … Read more