A UNC School of Government Blog
Several interesting news items have cropped up recently. First, the United States Supreme Court decided District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, in which a 5-4 majority ruled that there is no constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. Having slogged through the whole decision, my sense is that it will have limited impact in North Carolina given … Read more
Several stories of interest to readers of this blog have appeared over the last several days. First, the Winston-Salem Journal, in an editorial available here, is asking the General Assembly to take a close look at the death penalty, and to impose a moratorium while it does so. Of course, as the editorial notes, we … Read more
Big news on the high court: Justice David Souter, who famously said that he had the world’s best job in the world’s worst city, is reportedly retiring at the end of the term in June. The New York Times story is here. Souter was appointed by the first President Bush on the assumption that he … Read more
I’ve been involved in the New Prosecutors’ School this week, but the flow of criminal law news has been constant. First, the News and Observer had an interesting story yesterday, available here, about the use of protective orders under the discovery statute. The details are a little hazy, but it appears that a protective order … Read more
Several newsworthy items have cropped up lately, so I wanted to take a day to highlight some of them. First and foremost, the News and Observer has a troubling front-page story, here, about the SBI’s investigation into allegedly fraudulent dismissals of DWI cases in Johnston County. Not the sort of publicity the court system needs. … Read more
This post simply highlights and links to some of the criminal law news that’s broken over the last few days, since there’s been an unusual amount of it. First, the National Academy of Sciences issued an apparently scathing report about the state of the nation’s crime labs. Newspaper story here, full report available for purchase … Read more