North Carolina Criminal Law

One of the newest attractions in downtown Raleigh is the Trolley Pub. Passengers board the open air bar on wheels in the Warehouse District and slowly cruise the city streets, […]

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(Editor’s note: Jamie Markham is a co-author of this post.) Level A1 DWI.  The General Assembly created Aggravated Level One sentencing for misdemeanor impaired driving in 2011. See S.L. 2011-191 […]

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Nearly two thousand defendants were charged last year with aiding and abetting driving while impaired in violation of G.S. 20-138.1. A defendant aids and abets impaired driving when he knowingly […]

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Rule 45. This rule surprised me. Before I learned about it, I assumed that when a party sought to introduce hospital medical records at trial, a records custodian appeared in […]

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Forget all your legal training. Pretend you are a juror in a DWI case. Facts. The following facts were established at trial: The defendant was stopped at a checkpoint. The […]

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My recent paper (here) on the use of remote testimony in criminal cases involving forensic analysts was written in part because of the flood of interest in legislative solutions to […]

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Author’s note: This post has been updated since its initial publication. The original version overlooked G.S. 15A-1340.11(7), a statute that is clearly relevant to the discussion. Do old (as in, […]

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As state crime lab backlogs increase, it takes longer and longer for blood drawn in connection with impaired driving cases to be tested. In some of these cases, the State […]

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Even the greenest of prosecutors knows to ask it.  And all officers, from rookie to veteran, know how to answer. Rare is the impaired driving case without it. What’s the […]

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The United States Supreme Court decided Missouri v McNeely yesterday, holding that in impaired driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in […]

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