Local Government Authority to Regulate Traffic
[Editor’s note: This post originally appeared here, on the School of Government’s local government blog. For an update on local government authority to regulate cell phone use by drivers, see […]
Ad Hoc Conditions of Probation
Under G.S. 15A-1343(b1)(10), a court may, in addition to the regular conditions of probation and any statutory special conditions, require a defendant to “[s]atisfy any other conditions determined by the […]
News Roundup
1. Bloggers often feel like Rodney Dangerfield: we get no respect. But over the past week, I’ve learned that under the latest revision of the Bluebook, the citation manual for […]
Fair Cross Section
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court decided Berghuis v. Smith, a case in which the defendant claimed that the pool from which his jury was selected was not a fair […]
Must the State Inform the Defense When a Witness Goes Missing?
I blogged recently about whether the state is obligated to produce its witnesses’ criminal records in discovery. (Recall that the answer is no, in North Carolina, with some exceptions.) Another […]
Decriminalizing Certain Offenses to Reduce Appointed Counsel Costs
The Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) is studying data related to the disposition of seventeen types of misdemeanor charges during the 2009 fiscal year to determine whether decriminalization of […]
Lee v. Gore and Checking the Box
In an implied consent case in which a defendant is asked to submit to a chemical analysis, the law enforcement officer and chemical analyst (who often are the same person) […]
Fingerprinting Uncooperative Defendants
From time to time, an officer or a magistrate asks how to respond when a defendant who is properly subject to fingerprinting under G.S. 15A-502 refuses to be fingerprinted. There […]
Mello and “Loitering for Drugs” Ordinances
Can a municipality adopt an ordinance that criminalizes loitering for the purpose of drug activity? I’ve been asked that question several times, and in fact, a number of North Carolina […]
Human Lie Detectors
Our court system assumes that people can tell whether other people are telling the truth by evaluating the demeanor of the other people. This is true in a wide range […]