July 9, 2018
About a year ago, I wrote this post, discussing what was then a new provision in G.S. 15A-304(b): “[A]n official shall only find probable cause based solely on information provided by a person who is not a sworn law enforcement officer if the information is provided by written affidavit.” This year, the General Assembly reversed course and removed the affidavit requirement.
July 31, 2017
A colleague stopped into my office the other day to ask “did the General Assembly get rid of citizen-initiated warrants?” No, but it did make some significant changes to the procedure.
January 5, 2016
Have you ever been involved in a case in which the defendant was convicted of a criminal charge, did his time, and then was served with an outstanding warrant even though the warrant was pending when he was convicted of the other charge? If the warrant had been served earlier, the defendant could have taken care all of his criminal business at once. Doing so would save the court time, allow the State to come up with an appropriate resolution of all the charges, and allow the defendant to coordinate his defense and, if convicted, seek concurrent sentences or a combination of active and probationary time. If resolved before a single court at the same time, the charges could be consolidated for judgment (G.S. 15A-1340.15(b)) and also would result in fewer prior record points (G.S. 15A-1340.14(d)). A little-noticed piece of legislation from 2015, S.L. 2015-48 (H 570), attempts to address the problem of unserved warrants. Effective October 1, 2015, the legislation directs law enforcement agencies, the Division of Adult Correction, prosecutors, and the courts to identify and attempt to resolve outstanding warrants while other charges are pending or the defendant is in custody.
August 13, 2012
The most famous footnote in all the world is generally acknowledged to be footnote 4 in United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938). That footnote introduced to […]
January 5, 2012
NCAWARE is an acronym for the North CArolina WArrant REpository. It is the computer system that is used by judicial officials, usually magistrates, to create criminal process documents such as […]
February 2, 2010
I’ve been asked several times recently whether an officer who asks a magistrate to issue an arrest warrant and is turned down based on a lack of probable cause can […]