North Carolina Criminal Law

Here’s a common fact pattern: Officers find a person in possession of drugs. The officers say, in effect, “we won’t arrest you if you’ll tell us who sold you the […]

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Last summer, I wrote about State v. Jackson, __ N.C. App. __, 758 S.E.2d 39 (2014), in which the court of appeals ruled that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion to […]

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I’ve had more and more questions about introducing GPS tracking data in criminal trials. When I think about digital evidence, I think about authentication as the first hurdle. This post […]

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More and more criminal cases involve electronic tracking. Sometimes the defendant is tracked using GPS, other times using cell site location information. Either way, interesting evidentiary questions arise. May an […]

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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 a case decided earlier this month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that Maryland v. Craig, which allows certain child abuse victims to testify by way of closed-circuit […]

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Defendants sometimes argue, usually in sexual assault cases, that the complaining witness should not be called a “victim” during court proceedings. The basis of the argument is that using that […]

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