North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

More people throughout North Carolina may find themselves facing driving while impaired charges if the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has its way. The federal agency just announced its recommendation that the limit for blood alcohol content be lowered from .08 to .05, an almost 35 percent drop in the amount of alcohol allowed in a person's system before he or she is considered legally impaired.

The NTSB reported that as many as 10,000 lives are lost each year to impaired driving accidents, justifying its recommendation to lower, again, the impairment level for DWI. The last time the DWI limit was changed, from 1.0 to .08, it took almost 20 years for all states to adopt the BAC change.

A 21-year-old Garner man was arrested on alleged sex offenses reported on the North Carolina State University campus. According to reports, an NC State student reported that she was sexually assaulted outside the D.H. Hill Library early in the morning in late April.

Marlon Miller is now facing sex crimes charges of second-degree forcible sex offense, first-degree kidnapping and communicating threats related to the alleged attack. Miller doesn't attend NC State but is often around campus skateboarding. Several people claim that he admitted to the attack within the days following the campus sex crimes report. He turned himself into police voluntarily.

The former firearms manager at North Carolina Law Enforcement Support Service (LESS) may face up to 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing weapons from the United States. LESS loans surplus equipment from the Department of Defense to state and local law enforcement agencies.

An audit of the NCLESS's holdings revealed missing weapons in 2009, triggering the investigation that ended in 55-year-old Brian Minish's arrest. Upon questioning, Minish allegedly sent investigators on "a wild goose chase across [North Carolina]" for the missing weapons. He attempted to cover his tracks by mailing weapons to his office purportedly as returns from a sheriff's office in the state.

A blood analyst who worked for the State Bureau of Investigation when Mike Peterson was brought to trial on murder charges in 2001 may be the key to Peterson's request for a new, fair trial. Peterson was convicted of the murder in 2003, but his conviction was set aside in 2011 because of false testimony offered by a witness for the state.

The state appealed the grant of a new trial, claiming that the expert's questionable credibility and testimony did not play a major factor in the jury voting to convict Peterson. The expert, Duane Deaver, had testified that the pattern of blood smatter in the Peterson's staircase indicated that the wife had been pushed down the stairs, rather than fallen, as Peterson asserted.

A 45-year-old Raleigh man was charged with trafficking in cocaine after making three sales on separate occasions to undercover Wake County law enforcement. The third sale was a 'charm' for Rogelio Cortez - or rather for the Wake County Sheriff's Office - he was arrested during the third sale.

Bond was set at $1 million for Cortez, who did not have a known permanent address in Raleigh. He is still being held in jail on the drug trafficking charges. In total, he faces 11 drug crimes including multiple counts of possession, transporting, selling and delivering.

Recent statistics released by the North Carolina Justice Department have Attorney General Roy Cooper calling for increased enforcement of domestic violence laws for both men and women throughout the state. According to the Justice Department, 122 people were killed in incidents of domestic violence in 2012.

Almost twice as many women as men fell victim to fatal domestic violence episodes in 2012. Wake County saw more domestic violence murders than any other North Carolina County, with Mecklenburg County not far behind.

The defense team offered a guilty plea in exchange for life without parole for the infamous Colorado theater gunman. But, prosecutors declined the offer and have publicly announced that they will seek the death penalty as punishment for the man who killed 12 people and injured 70 while they watched a late-night showing of a Batman film.

The prosecution's determination to seek the death penalty was made in part based on the wishes of those who survived the horrific tragedy, their families and the families of those who did not walk out of the theater. It is still possible, however, that a plea may be negotiated before the capital trial begins, possibly next year.

The shooter's defense team is still considering whether an insanity defense is the best criminal defense strategy in this case.

While federal sentencing guidelines do give inmates credit for good behavior toward early release from prison, there is no parole in the federal system like there is in the state system. There are no 50-year sentences that allow for release after 20 years served (just a random example). That has meant that has state prison systems have seen a decline in their overall population, federal prisons have not.

In fact, federal prisons are 39 percent over capacity. Without substantial changes to the federal mandatory minimum sentencing structure, that number will likely continue to grow. But, Senators Rand Paul and Pat Leahy introduced a bill to help prevent prison overcrowding by bringing sentencing better inline with the actual crime a person is convicted of.