A UNC School of Government Blog
WRAL news reported last week that a Selma police officer had been placed on administrative leave after he allegedly handcuffed an emergency room nurse who refused to withdraw blood from a defendant suspected of impaired driving. The nurse reportedly was released from handcuffs after Smithfield police arrived, and charges against the suspected impaired driver were … Read more
Several earlier posts (here, here and here) address the availability of a limited driving privilege for a person whose driver’s license is revoked upon conviction of impaired driving. Such a privilege allows a person to lawfully drive—for limited purposes at limited times—during the period of the revocation. I wrote here about DMV’s authority to revoke a … Read more
Y’all may be tired of reading about sentencing in impaired driving cases, particularly if you’ve read this entire bulletin. But I’m hoping the reader-market will bear a few more sentencing-related posts since I’ve not tired of writing about the subject. Recently, in a session I taught about sentencing under G.S. 20-179, a lively discussion broke … Read more
Jeff wrote earlier this week about the court of appeals’ opinion in State v. Osterhoudt (August 21, 2012). Jeff’s post dealt with the court’s substantive analysis of whether the police officer who stopped the defendant had the reasonable, articulable suspicion required to render the stop lawful under the Fourth Amendment. I want to focus on … Read more
I’ve heard folks say that there is criminal law . . . and then there is impaired driving law. What I think they mean is that while impaired driving is, of course, a crime, subject to the rules of criminal procedure and constitutional provisions that apply generally to the investigation, charging, trial, conviction and sentencing … Read more
Five years ago, the General Assembly authorized judges to require that defendants placed on probation for a Level One or Level Two impaired driving offense abstain from consuming alcohol for at least thirty but not more than sixty days as verified by a continuous alcohol monitoring system. Continuous alcohol monitoring systems (CAM) employ ankle transmitter … Read more
Two earlier posts (here and here) explore whether North Carolina’s implied consent statutes or the U.S. Constitution require that notice of implied consent rights be provided in language that a person speaks or understands. As those posts report, the answer is unclear. There are no North Carolina appellate court decisions on point and courts in … Read more
Drunk drivers have difficulty driving in a straight line. Therefore, police officers frequently stop drivers who are weaving, suspecting them of impaired driving. Until very recently, it seemed that the law was settled that weaving alone could not support a DWI stop. Rather, “weaving plus,” or weaving combined with some other circumstance suggesting impairment, was … Read more
Several recent stories in the News and Observer (here, here, here, and here) have chronicled the SBI’s investigation into orders entered in certain impaired driving cases by former Wake County District Court Judge Kristin Ruth, who resigned last month. Newspaper reports characterize the orders at issue as purporting to alter the conviction date for impaired … Read more
I wrote here about several types of driver’s license revocations that can result from a person being charged with and convicted of impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1 as well as about a driver’s ability to obtain a limited driving privilege to mitigate the effects of the revocation that occurs upon conviction. The earlier post omitted … Read more