Increasingly, public defender offices are bringing social workers in-house. As part of a growing interest in holistic defense, these offices are relying on social workers to assist with the representation of their clients in a variety of ways. Social workers…

Hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants were summarily deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador last weekend. Federal authorities relied on President Trump’s executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in removing the immigrants without due…

Last September, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Thomas, No. COA23-210, __ N.C. App. __ (2024), a case involving law enforcement’s retrieval of ankle monitor location data gathered while the defendant was on post-release supervision. This is the first…

After a two-week evidentiary hearing last February, and closing arguments delivered in August, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. issued a 120-page order concluding that racism significantly affected the 2009 Johnston County trial of Hasson Bacote that resulted in the…

I recently completed a series of posts on issues surrounding confidential informants (“CI’s”), discovery, and motions to reveal the CI’s identity. In this “bonus” post, I will discuss a related question: what is the “CI file” and when must the…

In the waning weeks of his four-year term, President Biden announced commutations of 37 of 40 federal death sentences. With the exception of three individuals convicted of crimes involving “terrorism” or “hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden decided that the remaining federal…

For the final installment of this series on confidential informants, motions to reveal identity, and discovery, we will look at a unique statute in North Carolina concerning when the identity of a confidential informant (CI) must be revealed: G.S. 15A-978(b).…

After a plea deal between 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the U.S. government was declared void by order of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a military judge has now ruled that the plea agreement is valid, the AP reports. The…

This is Part V of a multi-part series on confidential informants (“CI’s”), motions to reveal the identity of CI’s, and discovery. As discussed in earlier posts in this series (here and here), the defense is more likely to win a…

The State of Missouri put Marcellus Williams to death Tuesday, despite opposition from St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell and the victim’s family, the Associated Press reports. Williams was convicted of the murder of Lisha Gayle in 1998. Gayle…