A UNC School of Government Blog
Last term, the United States Supreme Court decided Rothgery v. Gillespie County, available here. As most folks likely know, before Rothgery, North Carolina law held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel “attached” when the defendant had his first appearance before a district court judge. After Rothgery, it’s clear that the right attaches at … Read more
The Supreme Court’s latest criminal law decision is Kansas v. Ventris, available here. The basic holding is that a statement obtained in violation of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel may be admitted for impeachment purposes, so long as the statement was voluntary. In brief, the defendant in Ventris was charged with murder and … Read more
The Court of Appeals decided two Miranda cases last week: In re J.D.B, available here, and State v. Rooks, available here. The former is a very close juvenile case that produced three separate opinions. I’ll save my thoughts about it for after we hear from the Supreme Court of North Carolina. But there’s an argument … Read more
Can the state compel a suspect to provide access to encrypted files on the suspect’s computer? For example, if the police suspect that I’m running a Ponzi scheme, but I’ve got all my business records encrypted, can the state require me to produce an unencrypted version of the records? It’s an important question because more … Read more