I recently finished a paper on the law and practice of no-knock warrants in North Carolina. I went with the creative title, The Law and Practice of No-Knock Search Warrants in North Carolina. You can access the paper here. To give you a sense of the contents, here’s a paragraph from the introduction that notes some of the takeaways:
This bulletin takes a deep dive into the law and practice regarding no-knock warrants in North Carolina. Among the conclusions are: (1) there is no explicit authority for North Carolina judicial officials to issue no-knock warrants; (2) judicial officials sometimes issue such warrants anyway; (3) no-knock warrants seem to be very rare; (4) when an application for a no-knock warrant is granted, the resulting warrant does not always include an express judicial determination regarding the need for a no-knock entry or an express judicial authorization of such an entry; and (5) quick-knock entries, where officers knock and announce their presence and then immediately force entry, may be widespread.
Lots of other people made this paper possible, including practicioners who talked about their experiences with me, academics who wrote about this general topic in other jurisdictions, and clerks of court who pointed me in the right direction and let me look through many, many search warrants. My colleagues here at the School of Government provided helpful comments and valuable editing. Others too numerous to mention helped in various ways. I hope that the paper is useful and welcome feedback on it.
