North Carolina Criminal Law

As most readers of this blog are aware, S.L. 2010-94 creates a new statute, G.S. 15A-266.3A, which provides for the collection of a DNA sample from anyone arrested for a […]

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In Arizona v. Gant, __ U.S. __, 129 S. Ct. 1710 (2009), the Supreme Court held that an officer may search an arrestee’s vehicle incident to arrest only if the […]

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About two years ago, I wrote a paper on GPS tracking. It’s available here. There have been a couple of major decisions in the area recently, so this post is […]

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Earlier this week, the court of appeals decided State v. Simmons, a search and seizure case that should interest officers, lawyers, and judges. The facts are simple: an officer stopped […]

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The Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that cell phones generally cannot be searched without a warrant incident to arrest. That court’s decision is here. The law in North Carolina appears […]

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The court of appeals issued a batch of opinions yesterday. Among them is State v. Washburn, a drug dog case. An extremely compressed summary of Washburn is that an informant […]

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As one eminent Fourth Amendment scholar has observed, “[i]n recent years more Fourth Amendment battles have been fought about police activities incident to . . . what the courts call […]

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Computers and electronic storage media can hold massive quantities of data. At approximately 30,000 pages per gigabyte, a low-end laptop computer with a 250 gigabyte hard drive can store the […]

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The Ninth Circuit recently decided United States v. Payton, a computer search case that quietly adopts some pretty radical ideas. Based on the lack of comments on my previous computer […]

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Most readers of this blog know (1) that a search done pursuant to consent doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment, but (2) that the scope of search is limited by the […]

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