North Carolina Criminal Law

Magistrates walk a tight rope of sorts in setting conditions of pretrial release for defendants charged with impaired driving offenses.  In addition to taking into account all of the factors […]

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Five years ago, the General Assembly authorized judges to require that defendants placed on probation for a Level One or Level Two impaired driving offense abstain from consuming alcohol for […]

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In the last in this series of posts on pretrial release I’ll address two issues that continue to create problems for judicial officials: defendants who refuse to identify themselves and […]

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As a general rule, and subject to local bond policy, the law gives judicial officials a great deal of discretion to determine the appropriate conditions of pretrial release. In some […]

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In my first post in this series, I addressed the issue of who is entitled to conditions of pretrial release. In this post, I’ll address who can set conditions and […]

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Pretrial release didn’t used to be complicated. But over the last 10 years or so that’s changed, with the addition of exceptions and special procedures. In a series of posts, […]

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North Carolina’s implied-consent laws were substantially amended in 2006 to, in the words of the Governor’s task force recommending the change, “prevent dismissals under Knoll.” In State v. Knoll, 422 […]

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Jay Jones is charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and given an unsecured bond of $1,000. He is convicted following a bench trial in district court. Noting that Jones is […]

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An interesting article in the New York Times, available here, talks about the increasing use of GPS tracking in domestic violence cases, either as a condition of pretrial release or […]

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