North Carolina Criminal Law

May an officer prolong a routine traffic stop for four and a half minutes to allow a drug dog to sniff the exterior of the vehicle–even if the officer lacks […]

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Drunk drivers have difficulty driving in a straight line. Therefore, police officers frequently stop drivers who are weaving, suspecting them of impaired driving. Until very recently, it seemed that the […]

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Jeff has written before about whether a traffic stop may be prolonged to allow time for a drug-sniffing dog to arrive on the scene and sniff about the car (which […]

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Two recent cases from the court of appeals have added to our state’s weaving jurisprudence. One of them is a pretty big deal, as I’ll explain below. But first, the […]

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I’ve written about traffic stops at some length, in this paper. One of the areas in which the law is unsettled is the extent to which officers may engage in […]

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Happy new year! It’s great to be back at work after a relaxing vacation. I’ve written before about traffic stops. Recently, I returned to the subject and completed a pretty […]

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I noted yesterday that a law enforcement officer conducting a traffic stop may order the driver and any passengers out of the vehicle. It’s also reasonably clear that the officer […]

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As one eminent Fourth Amendment scholar has observed, “[i]n recent years more Fourth Amendment battles have been fought about police activities incident to . . . what the courts call […]

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Several recent inquiries have been variants of the following question: can an officer administer field sobriety tests during a routine traffic stop? In other words, if an officer has reasonable […]

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