Many, perhaps most, law enforcement officers in North Carolina are at will employees. As the saying goes, they may be fired for any reason or for no reason. But when […]
The current news seems to be full of reports of threats against schools. A search of the WRAL website for stories on school threats reveals at least five discrete stories […]
A Wake County couple was arrested last week on animal cruelty charges for poisoning three dogs belonging to a neighbor. Ironically, the husband was a donor and board member of […]
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 16, 2023. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a […]
This post summarizes published criminal and related decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during April 2023. Cases that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized […]
A decade ago, I wrote a post about the circumstances under which police may stop a person who is carrying a gun openly. A lot has changed since then. The […]
In U.S. Supreme Court news, the Court recently stayed the execution of Richard Glossip. Mr. Glossip has spent 26 years on death row in Oklahoma. This was his ninth scheduled […]
Suppose that a police officer in a North Carolina city shoots and kills a person in an encounter that began with a traffic stop. There is extensive media coverage of […]
The week began with news that one of the men accused of murder in the death of Wake County Sheriff Deputy Ned Byrd had escaped from a Virginia jail early […]
This post summarizes one published criminal opinion from the Supreme Court of North Carolina released on April 28, 2023, and three published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of […]