North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Serving as a confidential informant can be dangerous, whether the informant is an adult or underage. As to minors working as informants, the International Association of Chiefs of Police recounts a cautionary tale:

In 1998, police in California arrested [17-year-old Chad] MacDonald on drug charges. He agreed to act as a CI, wearing a recording device during at least one drug buy and providing police with information about local drug trafficking. A short time later, he was found dead in an alley, apparently tortured and strangled, and his girlfriend was found raped and shot to death in a canyon. MacDonald’s death was believed to have been the result of his association with law enforcement as a CI.

Bearing these risks in mind, is it lawful for police to use minors as confidential informants? Is it a good idea? This post explores the topic.

Some time ago, I received an email from a researcher asking whether a minor may consent to the search of his or her cell phone. The question made me realize how little I knew about children’s authority to consent to searches more generally. So I cracked some law books, and wrote this post as a primer for anyone who may be as uninformed as I was.

I was driving around with my younger daughter this weekend when she said “I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle.” She’s ten, so she’s obviously too young to pilot one herself. But would it be lawful for her to ride as a passenger?

WRAL reports that a district court judge told a Johnston County woman not to bring her 3-month-old baby to court. Can a judge do that?

Many years ago my colleague Janet Mason recruited me to teach about evidence issues in abuse, neglect, dependency, and termination of parental rights cases. She asked because most of the appellate law was criminal. After some grumbling, I produced a skinny 10-page paper in 2001. I’ve been adding to it ever since, and it has grown to a much longer chapter in the just-released 2017 edition of Abuse, Neglect, Dependency, and Termination of Parental Rights Proceedings in North Carolina. Although the manual is not about criminal cases, it may be helpful to those who work in the criminal courts. You can access the manual at no charge here. You can jump directly to the evidence chapter here.

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