BLOG
According to this recent article in the ABA Journal, criminal defense lawyers “[i]ncreasingly . . . are asking their clients to wear glasses during jury trials,” believing that juries will […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]