A UNC School of Government Blog
The jury in the John Edwards case is still deliberating. Although I haven’t followed the case closely, I found very interesting one evidentiary ruling that took place during the trial. Recall that the case concerns almost a million dollars that two of Edwards’ friends provided to pay the expenses of, and to hide, Edwards’ pregnant … Read more
Last week, I posted about the second look doctrine. (You can read that post here.) Recall that the basic idea is that if the police have custody of an object — like a wallet, or a purse, or a cell phone — that they could have searched incident to a defendant’s arrest and booking, they … Read more
Consider the following scenario. The police arrest Sam Suspect and charge him with murdering his wife, Vicky Victim. The arrest is based on a statement from Frank Friend, one of Sam’s buddies. According to Frank, Sam told him that he was having an affair and killed Vicky to get her “out of the way.” Sam … Read more