North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Most search warrants are for homes or offices. Some are for vehicles. Less often, a search warrant is for a person. See generally G.S. 15A-241 (defining a search warrant as an order authorizing the search of “designated premises, vehicles, or persons”). When a search warrant authorizes the search of a person, how intensive may the search be? Specifically, may the executing officer conduct a strip search?

In 2013, I wrote two posts on strip searches by law enforcement officers, which are available here and here. This post discusses the first published North Carolina appellate court strip search case since these posts: State v. Collins, 2016 WL 385690 (N.C. App., Feb. 2, 2016).

It’s a bird, it’s a plane . . . no, it’s a drone over the skies of North Carolina.  And soon it may be operated by law enforcement.  The News and Observer reports that the General Assembly is poised to enact S 446, which flew through the House yesterday and has been returned to the Senate for concurrence with relatively minor amendments.  The bill repeals the prohibition on governmental use of unmanned aircraft enacted in 2013 and authorizes the State’s Chief Information Officer to approve the procurement and operation of unmanned aircraft systems by State agencies and local governments.

This blog post is divided in two parts. This is Part II. Part I was posted yesterday. That post offered a general introduction, defined a strip search, and discussed the […]

This blog post is divided in two parts. This is Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow. Introduction. These posts will discuss strip searches by law enforcement officers that […]