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Nationwide, the biggest criminal law news of the week comes out of Florida, where Casey Anthony was found not guilty of the murder of her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. I personally […]

For a variety of reasons, it is sometimes helpful to know the maximum punishment applicable to a particular type of offense. For instance, when charging a defendant with possession of […]

The Supreme Court of the United States decided Blakely v. Washington in 2004, holding that any fact (other than a prior conviction) that increases a defendant’s sentence beyond the prescribed […]

Every now and then, someone asks me about international extradition. Usually it’s about Roman Polanski or some other bigwig charged in New York or California, but once in a while […]

Jeff has entrusted me with the virtual keys to the blog while he is away on vacation, and today will be my first crack at rounding up the week’s criminal […]

The Governor signed the Justice Reinvestment Act (S.L. 2011-192 (H 642)) into law last week. It makes substantial changes to the law of sentencing and corrections in North Carolina—easily the […]

On June 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bullcoming v. New Mexico. As anticipated, the case turned out to be a straightforward application of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. __, […]

Suppose that a magistrate is asked to issue a search warrant for a particular residence. Based on the information presented to her by the applicant, the magistrate believes that there […]

Grossly aggravating or just grossly confusing?  When is a DWI defendant driving while revoked for an impaired driving revocation? Several earlier posts (here , here and here) have discussed sentencing […]

The United States Supreme Court decided a big Confrontation Clause case yesterday. I hope that Jessie Smith will do a full recap and analysis of it, but the central holding […]