A UNC School of Government Blog
1. The General Assembly has been working on the budget lately. The House is proposing significant budget cuts to the court system, including reductions in the number of victim/witness legal assistants, reductions to indigent defense, and reductions to the Administrative Office of the Courts, including the elimination of trial court administrators. That last bit is … Read more
Tomorrow’s a UNC holiday, so I’m rounding up the week’s news a day early. 1. Professor Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University released a new death penalty study this week, and held a press conference in Raleigh to announce it. According to this Winston-Salem Journal article, Professor Robinson “analyzed data from more than 20 studies … Read more
It’s been almost two weeks, so there’s been more news than I can reasonably cram into a news roundup. But I’ll try! 1. The General Assembly’s in session. They’re working on the budget. The News and Observer reports here that “[t]he state budget proposed by House Republicans Tuesday would slash budgets for courts, public safety … Read more
The usual Friday news roundup was displaced last week by an extremely important post. But the news itself just kept coming, including the following: 1. The General Assembly passed the Forensic Sciences Act, a bill that will reform the workings of the SBI crime lab. A News and Observer story about the bill is here, … Read more
Duke took it on the chin last night, losing to a confident, athletic Arizona team. That’s the basketball roundup. Now for the criminal law roundup: 1. The Conference of District Attorneys has completed a review of the SBI lab cases identified as problematic in the Swecker report. The Conference’s press release states that the review … Read more
The biggest news of the last few days, of course, is that Kyrie Irving is expected to return to the court when Duke plays Hampton this afternoon. (OK, the biggest news has been from Libya and Japan, but Kyrie Irving is a close third!) In terms of criminal law news, there have also been several … Read more
Nationally, the biggest piece of criminal law news this week was that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill that repeals the death penalty in Illinois. He also commuted the sentences of the fifteen men on death row to life in prison. (All had been sentenced to death since 2000, when then-Governor George … Read more
With the General Assembly in session and the Supreme Court in term, each week brings a flood of interesting news. The top story this week was probably the Court’s decision in Michigan v. Bryant, a Confrontation Clause case in which the Court held that a mortally wounded shooting victim’s statements to police about the “identification … Read more
Lots of news again this week. 1. The News and Observer ran this story, the opening line of which is “[e]very case former State Bureau of Investigation Agent Duane Deaver touched is now a potential land mine.” It’s an interesting read, and it raises some serious legal issues. Plus, my colleague Jessie Smith is quoted. … Read more
What a week! The news stories just kept coming. It started off over the weekend, when the News and Observer published this interesting article about upcoming appellate arguments over the state’s “born alive” rule. As the article notes, “[t]he state Supreme Court has said that to convict someone for murder under common law, the victim … Read more