A UNC School of Government Blog
The Court of Appeals decided two rape shield cases this month — State v. Cook and State v. Adu — and Cook, in particular, is a good illustration of how protective our courts are of the privacy of alleged victims of sexual assaults. North Carolina’s rape shield law, N.C. R. Evid. 412, prohibits the introduction … Read more
With the growing prison population and the shrinking budget, there’s some talk of changes to North Carolina’s sentencing laws. An article in the paper last week made general reference to sentencing alternatives proposed by the Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. I thought people might be interested in knowing a little more about the specifics of … Read more
A couple of sessions ago, the General Assembly enacted G.S. 15A-211, which requires that custodial interrogations in homicide cases be recorded. The idea is to “eliminate disputes about interrogations,” id., and particularly, to prevent and record any coercion by law enforcement that might result in a false confession, and to prevent false claims of coercion. … Read more
I am teaching today, so I only have time for a quick post on a subject that crops up from time to time: how can the state compel access to documents it wants or needs to review during a criminal investigation? In the federal system, the grand jury can subpoena documents in its investigative capacity, … Read more
Criminal lawyers are paying more attention to immigration issues in cases where the defendant is not a United States citizen, and that’s a good thing. But my sense is that many lawyers don’t know about a provision of immigration law that applies in certain cases where the victim is not a United States citizen. It’s … Read more
The News and Observer ran a story today about a piece of proposed legislation that would allow any law enforcement officer to search any probationer, for any reason, at any time. The story is here, and the proposed legislation itself is available here. In essence, it would remove G.S. 15A-1343(b1)(7), which gives judges the option … Read more
Valentine’s day is coming up, which got me thinking about a fact pattern I ran into a while back. Dan wants to get his girlfriend, Ann, a present — say, roses — but doesn’t want to pay for the gift. So Dan tells Victor, a florist, that he’ll pay Victor in a few days if … Read more
In addition to sentencing in the mitigated range of the Structured Sentencing grid, there are two ways defendants can receive more lenient punishment in North Carolina: extraordinary mitigation and substantial assistance. Each law applies only in certain circumstances, and sometimes there’s confusion between the two. Extraordinary mitigation—or, more precisely, Dispositional Deviation for Extraordinary Mitigation under … Read more
The News and Observer has had several interesting criminal justice articles over the past few days — including one about the great potted plant caper, available here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2932/story/1394388.html — but the one that struck me the most was this one, about “sexting”: http://www.newsobserver.com/1595/story/1393616.html. Apparently, posting naked pictures of oneself on Myspace is soooooooo 2008. Kids who are really … Read more
Both prosecutors and defense lawyers have some training opportunities coming up here at the School of Government. Since this blog is intended to be of interest to both sides (as well as judges, law enforcement, and others), I thought I’d plug all of the training opportunities. A program for (relatively) new prosecutors will run from … Read more