Recent blog posts - 348 of 395

Today, the court of appeals decided State v. Baker.  Baker explains when a trial judge is required to make findings of fact when hearing a motion to suppress, and it […]

I wrote here about the court of appeals’ recent ruling in State v. Davis that expert testimony calculating the defendant’s alcohol concentration based on odor alone was improperly admitted at […]

The top story of the week is the controversy surrounding the new ban on electronic sweepstakes.  I posted about it yesterday, and after my initial post, the Attorney General issued […]

I’ve blogged before about the General Assembly’s latest effort to eradicate internet sweepstakes. Because G.S. 14-306.4 went into effect yesterday, I’ve had lots of questions about the law. (I even […]

North Carolina’s appellate courts have long said that a proceeding to revoke probation is not a criminal prosecution or a formal trial. Instead, probation hearings are generally regarded as informal […]

In prior posts, I discussed transferred intent and criminal negligence. Intent and criminal negligence, along with malice and willfulness are some of the common states of mind that the prosecution […]

Last month, the State Bar issued a proposed ethics opinion regarding contact between prosecutors and defense lawyers, on the one hand, and children who are prosecuting witnesses in criminal cases […]

I intended to have a deep, substantive post ready for today.  But in the press of holiday preparations, I didn’t complete it — and in any case, there’s been some […]

In 2002, David Hurt pled guilty to second-degree murder. Over the next several years his case bounced back and forth between the trial and appellate courts based on problems with […]

The Court of Appeals decided State v. Davis, 208 N.C. App. 26 (2010), last week, granting the defendant a new trial on second-degree murder, impaired driving and other charges arising […]