Latest posts tagged with magistrates on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

One of the projects that I wanted to finish before I go was updating my old paper on the 48-hour rule of G.S. 15A-534.1. I just completed the update. The […]

The National Center for State Courts just released new rankings of judicial salaries. How does North Carolina fare?

Today’s post is the last for the week since the School of Government is closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. In honor of the occasion, I want to recognize five criminal-law-related institutions, programs, and people for which I am particularly grateful.

I’ve had the same question several times recently: can a magistrate issue a search warrant for a computer or a cell phone? The answer is yes. This post explains why that’s so, and why there’s some confusion about the issue.

From time to time, I am asked about the right of private citizens to initiate criminal charges by approaching a magistrate. The arrest warrant statute, G.S. 15A-304, requires only that a magistrate be “supplied with sufficient information, supported by oath or affirmation” to find probable cause. The statute doesn’t limit the source of that information to law enforcement officers. As most readers know, it is common in North Carolina for private citizens to seek the issuance of an arrest warrant or a summons.

I have long thought that this was a distinctive feature of North Carolina law, but it seems to be somewhat more common than I believed.

The decades-old state supreme court decision in State v. Knoll, 322 N.C. 535 (1988), dismissing charges against three impaired driving defendants, is confusing.  For starters, the Knoll court’s decision hinged […]

When a defendant move to dismiss DWI charges based on a violation of his pre-trial release rights, the State’s first response is predictable: Subpoena the magistrate who presided over the […]

I’ve been asked several times recently whether an officer who asks a magistrate to issue an arrest warrant and is turned down based on a lack of probable cause can […]

Last term, the United States Supreme Court decided Rothgery v. Gillespie County, available here.  As most folks likely know, before Rothgery, North Carolina law held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment […]