A UNC School of Government Blog
The Supreme Court just finished the Term that began in October 2009, and it went out with a bang. On Monday, it announced what was perhaps the most-anticipated opinion of the year, McDonald v. City of Chicago. The genesis for McDonald was District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. __ (2008), the case in which … Read more
Recently, I’ve been posting about relevancy issues that arise with some frequency in North Carolina criminal cases. A final topic in that vein is the relevancy of evidence pertaining to weapons allegedly used in the crime. Suppose for example that the State seeks to introduce evidence of a knife allegedly used in an assault. The … Read more
Several interesting stories have cropped up over the past week. 1. In Moore County, a woman who was convicted in district court of DWI and speeding was acquitted on trial de novo in Superior Court. The unusual aspect of the case is that she admitted both offenses, but asserted the defense of necessity. According to … Read more
We’ve seen several significant cases concerning gun laws in the past few years. The two biggest, of course, are District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008), in which the United States Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun possession as inconsistent with the Second Amendment, and Britt v. North … Read more