This post summarizes published criminal decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during June 2022. Decisions that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous […]
According to the CDC, a “sharp instrument” was used in over 1,300 homicides in 2019. Knives are dangerous and police officers are justified in treating them as such. Under what […]
Over the past two weeks there have been several developments related to the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Till, who was Black, was 14 years old at […]
(Author’s Note: This post was updated on July 22, 2022, to note that NC DMV reports all in-state convictions for drivers licensed in another state to the state of record.) […]
State v. Graham, 2021-NCSC-125, 379 N.C. 75 (2021), sheds new light on what it means for an out-of-state prior conviction to be “substantially similar” to a North Carolina crime for […]
Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan, was shot and killed last week. News reports suggest that the man who killed him used a crude homemade gun. How are homemade […]
Once again, the leading news story of the week is a mass shooting. This one occurred on Monday during a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, a neighborhood […]
About seven years ago, I wrote this post about habitualized sex crimes. The issue I explored there was how to sentence a person convicted of a Class F through I […]
This post summarizes the published criminal opinion from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on July 5, 2022. This summary will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a […]
Yesterday, Justice Stephen Breyer officially resigned his seat on the Supreme Court of the United States after 28 years of service. Justice Breyer, universally described as a kind and humble […]