A UNC School of Government Blog
I was catching up on the Fourth Circuit’s recent opinions this weekend when I came across United States v. Luck. It raises some interesting issues that are not specific to federal court, so I thought I’d put together a post about it. The defendant in Luck was charged with drug and gun crimes. The government’s … Read more
I regularly am asked questions about criminal case calendaring. There are relatively detailed statutory provisions regarding the calendaring of superior court cases. As to district court cases, however, the statutes are much less clear, and the practice around the state appears to vary, with prosecutors generally playing the leading role, but judges, defense lawyers, clerks, … Read more
Back in March I wrote a post on restitution to government agencies, setting out the general rule in G.S. 15A-1340.37(c) that “[n]o government agency shall benefit by way of restitution except for particular damage or loss to it over and above normal operating costs . . . .” I mentioned in that post that I would write … Read more
Suppose that David Defendant is charged with driving while impaired based upon an incident on in which he drove his car off the road and crashed into a tree. The arresting officer testifies at trial that Defendant was unsteady on his feet at the scene of the accident and that she saw no signs of … Read more
The court of appeals issued its decision yesterday in a case called State v. Miller. It answers a question I get asked a lot: Can an active sentence be served in noncontinous periods? The answer: No, it can’t—at least not as a true active sentence. In Miller, the defendant received a 30-day suspended sentence in … Read more
I’m on vacation this week, so my blogging will be a little lighter fare than usual. Today, I thought I’d call attention to this article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. It is an excellent explanation of Maryland v. Shatzer, the Miranda decision about which I blogged here. I am still getting quite a few … Read more
The Supreme Court has been the subject of most of the interesting news over the past week or so. 1. The Court just finished the Term that began in October 2009. It’s now on hiatus until the fall. A short and worthwhile recap of the Term appears here, on SCOTUSblog. It challenges some commonly-held beliefs … Read more
Some crimes have their own sentencing regime—impaired driving, drug trafficking, and first-degree murder to name a few. There are also crimes that fall under Structured Sentencing but that also have additional punishment provisions built in. One such crime is concealment of merchandise in mercantile establishments, better known as shoplifting. Under G.S. 14-72.1(e), the punishment for … Read more
The Supreme Court just finished the Term that began in October 2009, and it went out with a bang. On Monday, it announced what was perhaps the most-anticipated opinion of the year, McDonald v. City of Chicago. The genesis for McDonald was District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. __ (2008), the case in which … Read more
The Fourth Circuit decided an interesting case yesterday. The case is United States v. Young, and the interesting part isn’t just the defendant’s nickname, “DJ Nelly Nell.” The relevant facts are as follows. The defendant was indicted on “various drug and weapons charges,” and a warrant for his arrest was issued. Officers staked out his … Read more