North Carolina Criminal Law

When may rap lyrics written by a defendant be admitted as evidence of guilt? That question has been in the news quite a bit lately as a result of a […]

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In connection with some teaching that I have coming up, I’ve prepared a short outline summarizing the law of interrogation. It’s available as a PDF here. It covers voluntariness, Miranda, […]

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According to my teenaged kids, “corpus delicti” sounds like something that will get you in trouble if you write about it on a government-sponsored blog. It is, however, an issue […]

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An involuntary confession can’t be used against a defendant at trial, not even to impeach him if he testifies. See, e.g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385 (1978). Whether a […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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A couple of sessions ago, the General Assembly enacted G.S. 15A-211, which requires that custodial interrogations in homicide cases be recorded. The idea is to “eliminate disputes about interrogations,” id., […]

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