North Carolina Criminal Law

Can a court order a suspect to use the suspect’s fingerprint to unlock his or her smartphone? Or would that violate the suspect’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination? I wrote […]

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This session, the General Assembly made some changes to the statute governing the fingerprinting of criminal defendants. Inside and outside the School of Government, people are divided about whether the […]

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From time to time, an officer or a magistrate asks how to respond when a defendant who is properly subject to fingerprinting under G.S. 15A-502 refuses to be fingerprinted. There […]

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Several stories of interest to readers of this blog have appeared over the last several days.  First, the Winston-Salem Journal, in an editorial available here, is asking the General Assembly […]

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An interesting article appeared yesterday in the New York Times. You can read it here, but the gist of it is that the federal government and about 15 states are […]

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