A UNC School of Government Blog
Jeff is away today, so I will round up the week’s legal news on his behalf. UNC-Chapel Hill professor killed. This story broke last week, but campus is still reeling from the news that beloved pharmacy professor Feng Liu was killed when he was robbed during a lunchtime walk near campus. He was apparently beaten … Read more
For the second week in a row, a death penalty story from the West is the headliner. Arizona executed convicted murderer Joseph Wood on Wednesday afternoon by lethal injection. His death took almost two hours. Some believe that Wood was gasping and snorting throughout and view it as a botched execution (see this Slate article), … Read more
Nationally, the biggest criminal law story of the week was the decision by a federal judge in California declaring the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. The case is Jones v. Chappell, and the essence of the Eighth Amendment argument is this: Since 1978, when the current death penalty system was adopted by California voters, over 900 … Read more
Locally, the big criminal justice news was former UNC basketball player P.J. Hairston getting a criminal summons. He allegedly punched a high school basketball player during a pickup game at the Durham YMCA. WRAL has the story here. I don’t know whether Tar Heels are more likely to cringe when hearing Hairston’s name or that … Read more
A couple of news items caught struck me during this holiday-shortened week. Impact of Riley on pending cases. I’ve started to have questions about the impact of Riley v. California, the Supreme Court case barring cell phone searches incident to arrest, on pending cases. The analysis is a bit of a long story. A good … Read more
If you thought that last week’s announcement of the 2013 Punishment Chart for North Carolina Crimes and Motor Vehicle Offenses was exciting, you will be even more entranced by this week’s offering! Yes, the 2013 update to Arrest Warrant and Indictment Forms is now available! We’re still waiting for the Publisher’s Weekly review, but if … Read more
The news this week contained quite a few little oddities. I’m stretched for time so I will set them out briefly. (For a lawyer.) First, Barry Saunders at the News and Observer wrote here about the teenager charged with misuse of the 911 system after she called to report that her parents had taken away … Read more
Looking for some great beach reading? Look no further than the 2013 Punishment Chart for North Carolina Crimes and Motor Vehicle Offenses by Bob Farb! Available here, it is 129 pages of legal goodness. It contains information about statutory penalties for North Carolina crimes, including which offenses require sex offender registration. The Administrative Office of … Read more
Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, the beginning of the end of WWII. Over 4,000 Allied soldiers died that day, and many more were injured. People have different ways of remembering the anniversary. My favorite commemoration is the one undertaken by 93-year-old Jim Martin, who did the same parachute drop into France … Read more
The focus in Raleigh this week was mostly on the budget. The Senate released its initial proposal, which differs from the Governor’s. As the News and Observer discusses here, the Senate budget would move the SBI and the Crime Lab from the Attorney General’s control to the Governor’s. Proponents of the move note that the … Read more