Rap Lyrics as Confessions
Jeff Welty
When may rap lyrics written by a defendant be admitted as evidence of guilt? That question has been in the news quite a bit lately as a result of a […]
August 27, 2013
When may rap lyrics written by a defendant be admitted as evidence of guilt? That question has been in the news quite a bit lately as a result of a […]
Read post "Rap Lyrics as Confessions"December 6, 2010
I wrote here about the court of appeals’ recent ruling in State v. Davis that expert testimony calculating the defendant’s alcohol concentration based on odor alone was improperly admitted at […]
Read post "State v. Davis: Rule 404(b) and Remote Convictions"October 13, 2010
I’ve had a couple of questions about the same topic recently, so I thought I’d do a quick blog post about it. Our appellate courts have made clear that normally, […]
Read post "Guilt of a Codefendant"April 29, 2010
As readers of this blog know, Rule 404(b) provides that although evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove propensity, it may be admissible for other […]
Read post "404(b) Evidence and the Bare Fact of a Prior Conviction"April 19, 2010
The State’s effort to introduce photographs of a homicide victim into evidence often is met with defense objections. One objection sometimes asserted is that the photographs are inadmissible as substantive […]
Read post "Photographs of Homicide Victims"March 30, 2010
Some crimes, such as felon in possession of a firearm, include as an element that the defendant has a qualifying prior conviction. When this is the case, the defense may […]
Read post "Rule 403: Old Chief and Stipulations to Prior Convictions"March 23, 2010
Recently, I’ve been posting about relevancy issues that arise with some frequency in North Carolina criminal cases. A final topic in that vein is the relevancy of evidence pertaining to […]
Read post "Relevancy: Weapons"March 17, 2010
In an earlier post, I wrote about relevancy and guilt of another. In this post, I consider another relevancy issue: context, circumstances, and chain of events evidence. Consider this problem: […]
Read post "Relevancy: “Context,” “Circumstances,” and “Chain of Events” Evidence"March 8, 2010
Editor’s note: Jessie has prepared a series of posts about the law of relevancy. They’ll run as an intermittent series over the next several weeks. In this and upcoming posts, […]
Read post "Relevancy: Guilt of Another"