Latest posts tagged with drugs on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Today, the court of appeals reversed a defendant’s drug convictions because the indictments identified the controlled substances in question using terms that are widely used to describe the drugs, but that are neither the chemical names listed in the controlled substance schedules nor – according to the court – “trade names” for the drugs. Because more and more drug cases involve pharmaceuticals that have many names, it is worth reviewing the case.

I’ve recently been asked several variants of this question: If a suspect sells drugs to an undercover officer on multiple occasions over a few days or weeks, can the drug quantities involved in each sale be aggregated to reach the trafficking threshold? That led me to spend some time looking at the more general issue of when multiple caches of drugs can be combined. This post lays out the law.

The court of appeals decided a case today concerning a fact pattern that arises frequently in drug cases. State v. McKinney began when an officer received a “citizen complaint” about […]

When a person is arrested while in possession of drugs and is taken to the jail in handcuffs, may the person properly be convicted of possessing drugs in a confinement […]

Earlier this week, United States Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking to American Bar Association, announced a policy change in how drug cases will be charged in federal court. This post […]

Drug trafficking offenses can lead to really long sentences, and not just because of the special minimums and maximums that apply to those crimes. Consider this example: My husband and […]

Cyclist Lance Armstrong has recently confessed to using performance enhancing drugs during each of his seven Tour de France victories. Public discussion has focused on whether his apology, during an […]

G.S. 90-95(a)(1) makes it a crime to knowingly sell or deliver a controlled substance to another person. As a general rule, the delivery of marijuana—a Schedule VI controlled substance—is a […]

In State v. Huerta, the court of appeals recently reaffirmed its controlled substance “combination decisions.” Here’s what happened. Huerta was convicted of, among other things, trafficking by possession of more […]

This weekend, the New York Times carried an article entitled Risky Rise of the Good Grade Pill. The piece concerns the abuse of certain prescription medications by high school and […]