North Carolina Criminal Law

It has been a while since my last post on cannabis and criminal law issues, and it is past time for an update. In addition to a number of state […]

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A decade ago, I wrote a post about the circumstances under which police may stop a person who is carrying a gun openly. A lot has changed since then. The […]

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The Governor ordered individuals in North Carolina to stay at home and non-essential business operations to cease beginning at 5 p.m. Monday, March 30, 2020. The order, Executive Order No. […]

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Editor’s note: The opinion analyzed in this post was withdrawn shortly after publication and replaced with this opinion reaching the same outcome. Last week, in State v. Ellis, __ N.C. […]

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Last week, the court of appeals ruled that during a traffic stop, an officer may require a driver to produce his or her license and may run computer checks on […]

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State v. Johnson, __ N.C. __ (August 18, 2017) opens like a novel: Defendant was stopped at a red light on a snowy evening. When the light turned green, defendant’s […]

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I have a “friend” whose teenage son was caught using his cell phone in class. The teacher saw him using it and took the phone. She looked at the phone […]

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Although reasonable suspicion requires less evidence than probable cause and often is not a difficult standard for an officer to satisfy to make an investigative stop, the standard requires an […]

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The United States Supreme Court in 2014 ruled in Heien v. North Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 530 (affirming State v. Heien, 366 N.C. 271 (2012)), that an officer’s objectively reasonable […]

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By now, most court actors are familiar with the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Rodriguez v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (April 21, 2015) (discussed […]

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