DNA Collection
An interesting article appeared yesterday in the New York Times. You can read it here, but the gist of it is that the federal government and about 15 states are now collecting DNA from people who are...
View ArticlePost-Conviction DNA Testing Heats Up
Editor’s note: A previous post concerning a United States Supreme Court case about post-conviction DNA testing appears here. Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of calls about requests for...
View ArticleNews Roundup
Several interesting news items have cropped up recently. First, the United States Supreme Court decided District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, in which a 5-4 majority ruled that there is no...
View ArticleNews Roundup
It’s time to round up some news. First, the News and Observer recently commented on President Obama’s failure to nominate any additional North Carolinians for the Fourth Circuit — a court on which Tar...
View ArticleCollecting Arrestees’ DNA
The News and Observer reports today on “a proposal to collect DNA from suspects when they are arrested for felonies or violent crimes.” The bill in question is H1403, and it states that “any person who...
View ArticleNinth Circuit DNA Collection Case
As most readers of this blog are aware, S.L. 2010-94 creates a new statute, G.S. 15A-266.3A, which provides for the collection of a DNA sample from anyone arrested for a laundry list of offenses, most...
View ArticleEvaluating The Circumstantial Murder Case
In recent years there has been a spate of cases assessing the sufficiency of the evidence in murder prosecutions where the State’s case is built on circumstantial evidence. A recent decision by the...
View ArticleSupreme Court Upholds Taking DNA Upon Arrest
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided a case that one Justice called “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades.” A bare majority of the Court ruled that the...
View ArticleDNA Test Results: Probability vs. Fallacy
The State of North Carolina goes to trial against Donnie Defendant, who is alleged to be the infamous “Tarheel State Killer” and charged with committing a series of brutal assaults and murders several...
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Part 1: Policing, DNA, Mental Health, and Rehabilitation
What do the topics in the title of this blog post have in common? They were the focus of the students’ criminal justice presentations this week. Nine teams of students, two on each team, have been...
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