A UNC School of Government Blog
As I mentioned in a recent news roundup, earlier this month the Supreme Court of North Carolina decided State v. Ward. The basic holding of the case is that the visual identification of controlled substances is not reliable enough to be admitted in criminal trials, and that a chemical analysis of such substances is normally … Read more
What an interesting week! The sports world was fascinating, between a dramatic World Cup win for the United States, a Raleigh native being picked first in the NBA draft, and a Greensboro native winning the longest tennis match ever played. But the legal world was pretty interesting, too: 1. The United States Supreme Court decided … Read more
Jessie Smith has just published a new Administration of Justice Bulletin, entitled Motions for Appropriate Relief. It’s available as a free download here. The focus is on procedural issues rather than the substantive law governing the various claims that can be asserted in an MAR, but as to questions of procedure, it is comprehensive, careful, … Read more
“You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” is classic relationship advice. But is “I didn’t know what I had until it was seized” a classic defense to drug charges? Consider the facts of State v. Hall. An officer stopped the defendant’s car for a traffic violation. The traffic stop led to a search … Read more
It was Father’s Day this Sunday, so it’s a good time for a post about family relationships. As a jumping off point, I’ll use a case that was recently highlighted in one of the clipping services to which I subscribe. The case is State v. Hubert, __ S.W.2d __, 2010 WL 2077166 (Tex. Ct. Crim. … Read more
Jamie recently blogged here about ad hoc conditions of probation, i.e., conditions other than the statutory ones. Because I’m interested in criminal law and technology, I wanted to add a follow-up post about restrictions on computer or internet use as part of a criminal sentence. It’s a timely topic, both because of Jamie’s post and … Read more
There’s been lots of interesting news lately, so I’ll dive right in. 1. The state supreme court issued several opinions yesterday. By far the most significant criminal case is State v. Ward. I may do a whole post about Ward, but the basic holding is that visual identification of controlled substances is unreliable and that … Read more
The court of appeals recently decided State v. Dark. It’s a concise opinion that summarizes and applies the black-letter law on an issue that comes up regularly: when must the state disclose the identity of a confidential informant to the defendant? G.S. 15A-904(a1) says that “[t]he State is not required to disclose the identity of … Read more
In several prior posts (including this one) I provided a link to the Department of Correction’s administrative regulation on sentence reduction credits. I’ve written about the credits applicable in impaired driving cases, and just last week I wrote about a Supreme Court case on good time credit in the federal prison system. It occurs to … Read more
As I have discussed in a number of prior posts [editor’s note: the most recent of those posts is here], the North Carolina courts have been struggling with whether the Confrontation Clause, as interpreted the Court in Crawford v. Washington and Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, allows for the use of substitute analysts. The petition for writ … Read more