Private Citizens Initiating Criminal Charges
From time to time, I am asked about the right of private citizens to initiate criminal charges by approaching a magistrate. The arrest warrant statute, G.S. 15A-304, requires only that […]
January 7, 2014
Heavy Traffic to a Residence and Probable Cause
The court of appeals decided a case today concerning a fact pattern that arises frequently in drug cases. State v. McKinney began when an officer received a “citizen complaint” about […]
July 9, 2013
Searching a Person Based on the Smell of Marijuana
The question. Many cases hold that the smell of marijuana provides probable cause to search a vehicle. See, e.g., State v. Greenwood, 301 N.C. 705, 708 (1981); State v. Smith, […]
February 20, 2013
Supreme Court: Alert by a Trained or Certified Drug Dog Normally Provides Probable Cause
Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Florida v. Harris, holding that when a trained and certified drug dog alerts on a vehicle, that normally provides probable cause to search the car, […]
October 4, 2012
State v. Smith: Dog Alerts and Particularized Suspicion
Last August, the court of appeals in State v. Smith, ___ N.C. App. ___, 729 S.E.2d 120, temp. stay granted, __ N.C. __, 731 S.E.2d 179 (mem.) (2012), decided an […]
March 28, 2012
Two Thoughts about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Case
George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, recently shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old who was walking through Zimmerman’s neighborhood. Martin was returning from a […]
June 28, 2011
Probable Cause: The Same for All Crimes?
Suppose that a magistrate is asked to issue a search warrant for a particular residence. Based on the information presented to her by the applicant, the magistrate believes that there […]
April 27, 2011
The Reliability of Drug-Sniffing Dogs
This recent post by Professor Orin Kerr reports on an emerging split of authority on what the state needs to show about the training and experience of a drug-sniffing dog […]
August 10, 2009
You Can’t Tell Just from the Smell
I’ve been asked more than once about whether the odor of alcohol combined with a positive reading on a portable breath alcohol screening test device, such as an ALCO-SENSOR, without […]
June 12, 2009
Pedophilia and Probable Cause
I’m getting ready to teach a session at the Superior Court Judges’ Conference about searches of computers and other electronic devices, so I’ve been reading all the computer search cases […]
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