North Carolina Criminal Law

I’m pleased to announce a new collaboration between the Public Defense Education team at the School of Government and Indigent Defense Services. I frequently get questions from defense lawyers about […]

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This post addresses three recurrent issues concerning eyewitness identification: When, if at all, is expert testimony about eyewitness identification admissible? When, if at all, is an indigent defendant entitled to […]

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The rules of thumb about expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases are (1) that an expert can’t testify that a child was, in fact, abused absent physical evidence, and […]

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I previously posted (here) about impeaching a witness with a prior inconsistent statement. In this blog post I’ll address impeaching with evidence of bias. As our blog readers know, a […]

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Tucked into the 2013 North Carolina budget bill is a provision imposing new court costs for expert witnesses who testify about chemical or forensic analyses at trial. Specifically, the new […]

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In State v. Cooper, issued last week, the Court of Appeals reversed the defendant’s conviction for first-degree murder of his wife and ordered a new trial. The case has drawn […]

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A couple of months ago, the court of appeals decided State v. McDowell, __ N.C. App. __, 715 S.E.2d 602 (2011). The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder notwithstanding his […]

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