Recent blog posts - 379 of 399

For the first time since 1995 we have a new felony punishment chart for Structured Sentencing. Two pieces of legislation from the past session, S.L. 2009-555 and S.L. 2009-556, made […]

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m especially interested in the law regarding electronic communications and electronic evidence. (For one thing, it allows me to look at web sites like Gizmodo and […]

I first encountered North Carolina’s impaired driving sentencing scheme several years ago when I worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina.  I represented […]

In previous posts [editor’s note: her prior posts are here and here] I have written about the developing North Carolina law on the use of substitute analysts after Melendez-Diaz. In […]

As a runner and a criminal lawyer, I found this story irresistable. The short version is that the police in Boulder, Colorado decided to stamp out the Naked Pumpkin Run, […]

With nothing terribly interesting or important going on in the world of criminal sentencing, it seemed as good a time as any to engage in some blatant self-promotion. For much […]

Even leaving aside the saga at the Board of Elections, there have been too many interesting news stories lately to ignore. 1. The News and Observe has this story about […]

Under G.S. 15A-1343(c1), defendants placed on supervised probation must pay a monthly supervision fee of $30, unless exempted by the court. That exemption may only be granted for good cause […]

I noted yesterday that a law enforcement officer conducting a traffic stop may order the driver and any passengers out of the vehicle. It’s also reasonably clear that the officer […]

As one eminent Fourth Amendment scholar has observed, “[i]n recent years more Fourth Amendment battles have been fought about police activities incident to . . . what the courts call […]