July 20, 2021
Judgeships in North Carolina’s trial and appellate courts are elected offices. Thus, it often is said that the ballot box is the mechanism for holding the state’s judicial officials accountable. […]
April 5, 2021
In 2016, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held in State v. Adams, 250 N.C. App. 664 (2016), that law enforcement officers acted lawfully when, lacking a warrant, they chased […]
April 1, 2019
The Supreme Court decided Bucklew v. Precythe today, rejecting a death row inmate’s challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol. Challenges to lethal injection are now 0-for-3 in the Supreme Court, […]
March 27, 2019
This March, you almost need a bracket to keep up with recent personnel changes in the state’s judicial branch. Not only were a handful of new appellate judges elected to […]
February 25, 2019
Last week, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion summarily reversing the Texas Court of Criminal appeals and finding that a death row inmate has an intellectual disability. The […]
November 12, 2018
North Carolina’s courts are closed today for Veterans Day, so although UNC is open, we won’t run a substantive post. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to thank all […]
October 2, 2018
While most news outlets focus on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, the Court has quietly kicked off a new Term. […]
June 26, 2018
In McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1500 (2018), the US Supreme Court held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment counsel right was violated when trial counsel admitted […]
June 25, 2018
On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a long-awaited opinion in Carpenter v. United States. The Court held that when law enforcement obtains long-term cell site location information from a suspect’s […]
May 21, 2018
A week ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved a circuit split and ruled that a person driving a rental car, but not listed on the rental […]