Motor Vehicle Checkpoints
I’ve just finished a paper about motor vehicle checkpoints. It’s available here as a free download. It’s meant as a resource for judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers, and it […]
News Roundup
There wasn’t enough news last week to justify a news roundup, but there sure was this week: 1. The SBI lab saga continues. The president of the Conference of District […]
Is Arizona v. Gant Limited to Automobiles?
In Arizona v. Gant, __ U.S. __, 129 S. Ct. 1710 (2009), the Supreme Court held that an officer may search an arrestee’s vehicle incident to arrest only if the […]
State v. Davis: The Supreme Court Weighs in on Punishment under G.S. 20-141.4
I blogged here about the court of appeals’ opinion in State v. Davis, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2010), a case in which the defendant was convicted of several offenses and […]
Update on GPS Tracking
About two years ago, I wrote a paper on GPS tracking. It’s available here. There have been a couple of major decisions in the area recently, so this post is […]
Jones v. Keller
Last Friday, after years of litigation and months of deliberation, the Supreme Court of North Carolina issued its decision in Jones v. Keller. The case resolves the question of what […]
Presentence Reports and Sentencing Plans
In 2009 the General Assembly ordered the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Department of Correction to study the feasibility of conducting presentence investigations on “all offenders convicted of […]
Proving That Blood Was Drawn by a Qualified Person
Earlier posts (here, here, and here) discuss the statutory and constitutional requirements for obtaining a sample of a defendant’s blood for analysis in an implied-consent case. This post likewise addresses […]
The Authority of Campus Police
Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Yencer, ruling, in effect, that Davidson College may not operate its own police department. The ruling calls into serious question the […]
Motions for Appropriate Relief and Procedural Default
As noted in an earlier post, I get asked a lot of questions about motions for appropriate relief (MARs). One procedural issue that causes some confusion is procedural default. The […]