In State v. Harbison, 315 N.C. 175 (1985), the North Carolina Supreme Court held that when defense counsel admits the defendant’s guilt to the jury without the defendant’s consent per […]
Two of the topics I write about the most are probation and sex offenders. Today’s post is about both, answering a question that—somewhat to my surprise—comes up pretty frequently: Can […]
There have been several interesting stories since the last news roundup, which was two weeks ago. 1. The General Assembly adjourned the short session when it finished the budget. The […]
Previously, Jeff and I posted about the post-Melendez-Diaz decisions by the N.C. Court of Appeals in the Brennan and Brewington substitute analyst cases (those posts are available here, here, and […]
I used to answer this question “no.” But even though the United States Supreme Court recently said exactly that, see Maryland v. Shatzer, __ U.S. __, 130 S. Ct. 1213 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]