…a criminal defendant’s initial appearance before a judicial officer, where he learns the charge against him and his liberty is subject to restriction, marks the start of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

The Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel includes two particular individual rights – the right to appointed counsel in cases where the person may be subject to imprisonment – which in North Carolina includes misdemeanors, but not infractions.

The Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel also includes the right to a counsel of one’s choosing, provided the person can afford to hire that lawyer. In other words, a person who has been appointed counsel may not choose the lawyer he likes best. But a person who has been appointed a lawyer, and then wishes to hire a lawyer, is constitutionally guaranteed to have that lawyer at proceedings.

The court may prohibit certain attorneys from serving as counsel. For instance, in the recent Johnny Edwards case in Greensboro, the United States District Court Judge Catherine Eagles prohibited certain lawyers who had a conflict from appearing as counsel on behalf of the defendant. See Wheat v. United States

But in general – absent those conflicts – the defendant is allowed to choose who he wants to appear on his behalf.

So if you’re ever in court and want to choose your own lawyer, while you’ll need to pay for that lawyer, be sure to make sure that the Court honors your right to have the lawyer of your choosing at the hearing.

See the Wikipedia entry on this issue.

In fact, according to the ACLU of New York, the police frisked more African-American people than live in the city of New York, which means that many were frisked multiple times over the course of 2011.

The NYPD has defended its actions, pointing to the drop in crime since the mid 90s, but it’s important to note that the dramatic increase in “Stop and Frisks” since 2002 has nothing to do with the decline in crime – in 2002, for instance, just 95,000 people were stopped and frisked.

It’s also important to note that many of these stop and frisks may in fact be illegal, since the police are not, under the United States Constitution, simply allowed to point to someone and order them to stop and be frisked. Police, under Terry v. Ohio, must have reasonable, articulable suspicion – specific facts pointing to criminal activity – to justify the stop and frisk.

I recently observed a police officer testify that he stopped a vehicle in Raleigh because the vehicle was a rental vehicle and because when he looked at the people and they made eye contact prior to the stop, the people glanced away as if they didn’t want to talk to the police officer.

The judge correctly ruled that the stop was illegal, violating the defendants’ rights under the Fourth Amendment. The specific facts must point to criminal activity.

There is an assumption that all impairment, however, is equally dangerous. A recent study shows that marijuana use may actually improve highway safety relative to alcohol use:

According to research published in November by the Institute for the Study of Labor, a German think tank, medical marijuana laws in the United States have been associated with a 9 percent decline in traffic fatalities. That result is based on data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System for 13 states that legalized medical use of cannabis between 1990 and 2009. The study’s authors, Montana State University economist D. Mark Anderson and University of Colorado at Denver economist Daniel Rees, argue that the most plausible explanation is the substitution of marijuana for alcohol, since laboratory research indicates that smoking pot impairs driving ability substantially less than drinking does.

Impaired driving is never a good idea. However, drivers impaired on marijuana may actually be safer than drivers impaired on alcohol, which is not a recommendation that people smoke pot before driving, but a recognition that different drugs affect the body differently.

Unless your gun rights have been restored, a felony conviction means you can never possess a firearm or ammunition again in your life.

The same rule applies for certain kinds of Domestic Violence-related crimes, even if they are merely misdemeanors. The Lautenberg Amendment to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), also known as the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban makes it a federal offense for someone convicted of a Domestic Violence crime to possess firearms or ammunition.

Not all Domestic Violence offenses automatically mean that the convicted person’s gun rights are lost. 18 USC 921 specifies that in order for the offense to bar gun ownership, the offense must have:

as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon, committed by a current or former spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabiting with or has cohabited with the victim as a spouse, parent, or guardian, or by a person similarly situated to a spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim.

For instance, assaults on a female surely mean that a person convicted of an AOF in North Carolina in a domestic violence scenario will lose his or her gun rights. But other DV crimes, including interfering with emergency communications, injury to personal property, and so forth may not actually result in a loss of gun rights.

People charged with DV cases must be aware of not only the immediate consequences of a conviction, but also the potential collateral consequences as described above.

For first time offenders, a person charged with certain kinds of misdemeanor or felony possession charges may be eligible for drug diversion programs where, at the conclusion of the program, they are eligible for the complete dismissal of all drug crimes if they complete all the terms of the program.

It is important to hire an effective Raleigh drug lawyer as early as possible in the case, so as not to expose yourself or your child to additional charges, and to attempt to convoke a Wake County Assistant District Attorney to offer you a program that can result ultimately in a clean record.

If you or a loved one has been charged with drug trafficking, it is especially important to hire an effective Raleigh drug lawyer. Drug trafficking statutes have mandatory minimum sentences. If not handled properly, and if convicted of the offense, a defendant will be sentenced to at least 25 months (for certain drugs, such as marijuana) and at least 70 months (for opiates, including hydrocodone, oxycontin, and heroin).

If convicted of North Carolina drug trafficking crime, a defendant cannot receive any reduction in the sentence below the mandatory minimum unless the person provides “substantial assistance.”

It is important that you have an attorney who understands how to properly offer substantial assistant, and how to work with law enforcement to make your substantial assistance as effective as possible.

In addition, it is important that you have an attorney who is willing to go to trial, if that’s what you choose to do.

While people usually realize that a felony conviction is important, to often they regard a misdemeanor as an inconvenience. As a result, they don’t hire a lawyer, they handle it themselves, or they allow their child to have a public defender appointed in the matter. Given how overworked public defenders are, the results are understandable.

As this Slate article explains, a misdemeanor can have tragic consequences if not handled properly.

The misdemeanor machine has inspired a slew of epithets: “meet ‘em and plead ‘em lawyering,” “assembly line justice,” “cattle herding,” and “McJustice.” They reflect the reality that once people charged with misdemeanors get to court, they are pressured by judges, prosecutors, and their own lawyers into pleading guilty, often without knowledge of their rights or the nature of the charges against them. Bail makes it worse. Around 80 percent of defendants who have bail set cannot afford to pay it. Innocent defendants commonly plead guilty just to get out of jail. In this way, millions of Americans are punished without due process and learn the cynical lesson that, at least when it comes to minor offenses, law and evidence aren’t all that important.
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Of course, there’s an argument that minor crimes may not actually matter that much. Guilty pleas typically result in a fine or probation, not prison. Given the deplorable lack of resources systemwide, perhaps minor crimes should indeed be handled in the quickest, cheapest way without counsel or a whole lot of due process. Indeed, petty offenders may well get out of jail sooner if they plead guilty. Moreover, it is widely assumed that these millions of defendants are actually guilty, so rushing them through the system probably won’t result in much of a miscarriage of justice. Maybe there are good reasons to take the quick-and-dirty approach.
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t write off misdemeanors.

The repercussions of a petty conviction can be anything but minor. These offenses are increasingly punished with hefty fines that low-income defendants cannot pay. A conviction of any kind can ruin a person’s job prospects. A petty conviction can affect eligibility for professional licenses, child custody, food stamps, student loans, and health care or lead to deportation. In many cities, a misdemeanor makes you ineligible for public housing.

The New York Times reports that:

With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.

But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide.

This report comes two months after the Supreme Court ruled in January in U.S. v. Jones that the defendant’s conviction be reversed because police used had used information from a GPS tracking device without first getting a warrant as required under the Fourth Amendment.

When will a drug-detection dog’s alert to the exterior of a vehicle provide an officer with probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of the interior of the vehicle? That is the question in this case, and the answer is integral to the constitutional right of all individuals in this state to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures.

and concludes:

For the reasons explained below, we hold that evidence that the dog has been trained and certified to detect narcotics, standing alone, is not sufficient to establish the dog’s reliability for purposes of determining probable cause—especially since training and certification in this state are not standardized and thus each training and certification program may differ with no meaningful way to assess them.

As Jacob Sullum explains:

Although the Supreme Court has issued several decisions dealing with police dogs over the years, it has not squarely addressed the question of their reliability. Dissenting in Illinois v. Caballes, a 2005 decision that allowed warrantless sniffs of cars during routine traffic stops, Justice David Souter noted that “the infallible dog…is a creature of legal fiction.” Souter cited examples from court cases of dogs with error rates of up to 38 percent, adding that “dogs in artificial testing situations return false positives anywhere from 12.5 to 60% of the time.” Souter is no longer on the Court, but evidently at least some of the current justices see a need to re-examine the assumption that a canine alert “discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics,” as the Court claimed in United States v. Place, a 1983 decision that allowed warrantless sniffs of luggage at airports on the theory that such examinations are not really searches. Maybe so, but they definitely lead to searches, and a careful consideration of whether and when they should is long overdue.

The bill would make it:

Because she wants to make it “unlawful for any person who has any level of cannabinoids or synthetic cannabinoid compound in his or her blood or urine to drive a vehicle.”

Cannabinoids — the active in ingredient in cannabis — can stay in the body for up to sixty days. Pot’s effect wears off in 90 minutes to three hours. Ergo, someone who’s had a a joint thirty days prior to any collision can be jailed for DUI under Torres’ ignorant bill. AB 2552 creates more costs to the state, criminalizes innocent people and does not the make roads any bit safer.