January 30, 2018
The question in the title of this post is one that I’ve been asked lots of times in different factual contexts. The basic question is, given that most people have […]
January 29, 2018
The Court of Appeals of North Carolina recently decided a case about police obtaining real-time location information from a suspect’s cellular service provider. The case does not address the principal […]
January 25, 2018
The United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in District of Columbia v. Wesby on Monday, holding that police officers had probable cause to arrest 16 people for unlawful entry […]
July 31, 2017
A colleague stopped into my office the other day to ask “did the General Assembly get rid of citizen-initiated warrants?” No, but it did make some significant changes to the […]
March 14, 2017
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled (2-1) in Smith v. Munday, 848 F.3d 248 (4th Cir. Feb. 3, 2017), that a North Carolina officer was not entitled to […]
February 27, 2017
Search warrant applications are often based on information from confidential informants. Whether the informant is reliable is critical. Information from a reliable informant is often sufficient to establish probable cause, […]
January 24, 2017
On December 21, 2016, the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Allman upheld a magistrate’s finding of probable cause to search a home for drugs, and it reversed a […]
November 8, 2016
Last week, Jeff Welty wrote a post concerning the failure to allege in a search application that the premises to be searched is the suspect’s home, and it included a […]
October 31, 2016
Sometimes officers have probable cause to believe that a person committed a crime, have probable cause that evidence of the crime will be found in the person’s residence, and seek […]
October 11, 2016
Here’s a common fact pattern: Officers find a person in possession of drugs. The officers say, in effect, “we won’t arrest you if you’ll tell us who sold you the […]