Megan Shepard – Gastonia Family Law Attorney When a couple decides to get a divorce, one of the largest issues they are faced with is how to divide their property. In North Carolina, the legal system has a presumption that all property will be divided equally. However, this is not always the case, especially when it comes to certain types of property. As such, what are the different types of property in a divorce? Classifications of Property Generally, there are three types of property that a divorcing couple could have: marital, separate, and mixed property. Marital Property Typically, martial property is any asset or liability that the divorce couple acquires during and throughout their marriage. This could include: houses, cars, or even debt that the couple incurs. As such, because martial property was acquired jointly, there is a legal presumption of equal division. However, although there is a presumption, both spouses are entitled to present arguments as to why the…
What Are the Different Types of Property In A Divorce?
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Is North Carolina the Only State in Which the Prosecutor Controls the Calendar?
I was on a panel about criminal case calendaring yesterday at the Courts Commission. While talking to people in preparation for the event, I kept hearing one thing: that North Carolina is the only state in which the prosecutor controls the calendar. After conducting some research, I don’t think that’s quite right. The prosecutor doesn’t have complete control of the calendar in North Carolina. It’s actually a hybrid system in which the court and the prosecutor share responsibility, with some local variation regarding the degree of control allocated to each actor. The starting point is G.S. 7A-61, which provides that “[t]he district attorney shall prepare the trial dockets.” At one time, that statute and others were interpreted to give the prosecutor nearly complete control over the calendar, subject only to constitutional guarantees such as the right to a speedy trial. That system was challenged in 1992 when two defendants in Durham County…
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Prosecutor’s Use of Perjured Testimony, Racist Rhetoric are Threat to Ordered Society
There are criminal cases in which the legal system fails. That is precisely what happened to Paysun Long, who, after 14 years, has been ordered released from prison after a federal court of appeals reversed his murder conviction. Mr. Long has been tried twice for a murder that the U.S. Court of Appeals says was based on weak evidence. Long’s first conviction was overturned after the court of appeals found the prosecutor had made “several improper statements” during closing arguments. His second conviction was recently overturned after the federal appeals court found the same prosecutor allowed and failed to correct perjured statement. It was also noted that the prosecutor referred to a document that was not admitted into evidence and used racially charged comments during closing arguments. The Sad Legal Saga of Paysun Long Long’s legal saga began on June 11, 2001 when someone came up behind Larriec…
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Heroin in Dallas: 5 Things About Dallas’ Heroin Market from the New DEA Report
Heroin use in Texas isn’t news, but the increasing use of this particularly notorious drug — and the skyrocketing number of drug overdose deaths in our state and across the country — is really getting newsworthy. Search the news, or just search for “heroin” in Twitter, and you’ll find stories from all over the country where people are being arrested for possession (or sale) of heroin. Places like Northhampton, Massachusetts; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Seattle, Washington. And the key thing you’ll find in lots of these news stories is what we’ve been discussing here in this blog for a very long time: heroin is now a very commonplace drug in middle and upper class homes, and with users at all socio-economic levels. The stigma is disappearing. (If there is a stigma to using heroin anymore.) And with it, there’s more and more calls to action for treating the addict instead of prosecuting the user. For details on that, just read…
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Texas Criminal Laws That Took Effect in 2015
This past summer, the 84th Texas Legislature put a number of new criminal laws on the books that took effect in September of 2015. In fact, Texas will see more than 1,200 new laws this year that may have an…Read more ›
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A Revealing Moment at the HuffPo
Erik Wemple, who writes a blog on media issues at the WaPo, has this post on union organizing efforts at Huffington Post. I was struck by this paragraph:The document touts the merits of a progressive news outlet internalizing its principles: "Unionizing is one way for us to stand by the ideals we often preach on our site," notes the letter.The signers of the letter are not, for the most part, opinion writers designated as such. Their titles imply that they are in the straight news business. Yet they see it as their job to "preach" their "ideals."The danger is that too many people today are getting most or all their news from people who have no dedication whatever to objective reporting. As the line between advocacy and reporting becomes ever more blurred, "facts" that are either undetermined or outright false become accepted as absolute truth by people who never hear them questioned. Elections and the…
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Grand Theft Laws In California
When talking about theft laws in California, it’s important to distinguish between theft and grand theft. To be specific, California law defines the crime of theft as the unlawful taking of someone else’s property. In situations where the value of the item taken is $950.00 or higher, then the crime is characterized as grand theft under Penal Code Section 487. What may start out as a simple shoplifting arrest, can result in a charge of grand theft, if the value is $950.00 or more. It is also important to note that grand theft charges are “wobblers”, meaning that they may be filed as a misdemeanor or felony, depending upon the circumstances. A conviction for grand theft can have devastating effects on a person’s professional and personal life but, with the help of an experienced criminal defense lawyer, it may be possible to have the charges reduced or dismissed completely. So what does the District Attorney have to…
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Vandalism and Malicious Destruction of Property
Vandalism and Malicious Destruction to Property Halloween is traditionally a time when young people exercise poor judgement and commit acts of vandalism and malicious destruction of property. Some do it as a prank or a joke, others do it with malicious intent. This year, two teens from Burlington were arrested for acts of vandalism to a mosque early in the morning hours after Halloween, according to a Boston Globe news report. “JJ” and “BB”, both age 18, have been accused of using red spray paint to graffiti the word “USA” over and over on the side of the Islamic Center of Burlington. Evidence of the crime was found by police patrolling the area shortly after 1:45 in the morning. The officers also noted that eggs had been smashed into the side of the mosque. The teens were charged with destruction of property over $250, under M.G.L. c. 266, s. 127, which involves willfully and maliciously destroying or damaging…
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The Latest in Customer Service
You cannot make this up. From NBC News reports:NBC News has learned that ISIS is using a web-savvy new tactic to expand its global operational footprint -- a 24-hour Jihadi Help Desk to help its foot soldiers spread its message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more attacks on foreign soil. Counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army tell NBC News that the ISIS help desk, manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock, was established with the express purpose of helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities. The relatively new development -- which law enforcement and intel officials say has ramped up over the past year -- is alarming because it allows potentially thousands of ISIS followers to move about and plan operations without any hint of activity showing up in their massive collection of signals intelligence.I wish the Help Desk at…
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Calling for Reform, Death Row Exoneree Anthony Graves Says Inequality is Greatest Threat to Criminal Justice
By Andrew Giacalone The murders, by all accounts, were horrific. Bobbie Davis, her 16 year-old daughter and four grandchildren had been stabbed, shot and bludgeoned with a hammer and their house doused with gasoline and set on fire. But the sentiments that engulfed Somerville, Texas, in the summer of 1992 quickly turned from horror to vengeance. It was a crime that could have only been committed by a “cold-blooded killer,” then-Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta declared at the time. Somerville Mayor Tanya Roush summed up the community’s anger over the killings telling the press that many wanted to “bring back the hangin’ tree, and save the taxpayers’ money.” The dragnet that descended on the town eventually scooped up Robert Earl Carter, father to one of the murdered children and the state's main suspect who, under pressure by investigating officers, admitted to the murders and implicated Carter's wife and…
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Criminal Law Reform That Deserves the Name?
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has this press release on a package of bills that, if the descriptions are accurate, may actually make improvements in the criminal law.In recent years, it seems like every package labeled "reform" has actually been a proposal to condemn us to repeat the soft-on-crime errors of the Age of Aquarius. According to the press release, these four bills would address (1) the required mental state where the statute specifies none, (2) acts made criminal by regulations rather than statutes, (3) acts that never should have been made criminal in the first place, and (4) just plain drafting errors. These are all genuine problems that genuinely need fixing.I hope to have time soon to look at the actual bill language and see if the bills live up to their billing.And I am really looking forward to citing the Fix the Footnotes Act of 2015 in a Supreme Court brief.
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Langer on Comparative Criminal Procedure
Maximo Langer (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law) has posted Strength, Weakness or Both? On the Endurance of the Adversarial-Inquisitorial Systems in Comparative Criminal Procedure (Research Handbook on Comparative Criminal Procedure, Jacqueline Ross & Stephen Thaman...
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Why We Should Hesitate to Give More Sentencing Discretion to Judges
This is one reason. It is not the main reason or close to it, in my view. At the same time, anyone with experience in criminal litigation knows that judges vary widely in temperament, ideology, outlook and background, and that even the same judge can vary markedly from one day to the next depending, for example, on whether he had a fight with his wife that morning.The principal reason Congress cut back on the previously almost unlimited sentencing discretion of judges in the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is simple: It didn't work. It produced wide and irrational disparity, and it had meandered hither and yon for 25 years while crime exploded. The public demanded something better and Congress complied, with (so far as crime rate statistics suggest) excellent results.Judges, by the nature of the business, must have a good deal of sentencing discretion a good deal of the time. Under our present system, they do. But judges are human beings, and…
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King and Walker on Counter Terrorism Financing
Colin King and Clive Walker (Sussex Law School and University of Leeds - Centre for Criminal Justice Studies (CCJS)) have posted Counter Terrorism Financing: A Redundant Fragmentation? (New Journal of European Criminal Law, Vol. 6, Issue 3, 2015) on SSRN....
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Knight, Gulati & Levi on Search Warrants and Bayesian Judges
Jack Knight , G. Mitu Gulati and David F. Levi (Duke University School of Law , Duke University School of Law and Duke University - School of Law) have posted How Bayesian Are Judges? on SSRN. Here is the abstract:...
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2015.94: Matthew Chappell’s Lawyer Letter (And Randazza’s Response)
I’m just going to leave this here for right now. I have plenty to say about it, but I’ve got a couple of other thinks in the hopper. Download the PDF file . As requested, I directed Chappell’s letter to my lawyer. Here is Marc Randazza’s response on my behalf. He’s much nicer than I would have been: Download the PDF file .
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House Judiciary Committee advances its Sentencing Reform Act of 2015 for full House consideration
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Yes, You Can Now Get Arrested for Twerking – Sexual Assault Arrests in Connecticut
Who would’ve thunk? Washington DC police are searching for two women accused of sexual assault—accused of twerking to background music playing in a DC area gas station. DC police are calling it a sexual assault. And as much of a joke as this may sound at first, a closer look at the video surveillance recordings reveals two women allegedly forcing themselves upon an unsuspecting male gas station customer who was just drying to get a cup of coffee—twerk-free! However, the bigger issue here…and the one that resonates most with the best Stamford & Greenwich Connecticut sexual assault criminal lawyers is that arrests like these speak loudly and clearly to sex assault police and DAs that should be prosecuting sex assault arrests in Connecticut with parity and equality. Why Do Men Get Arrested More Frequently for Connecticut Sexual Assaults? While there are no published statistics out there, it is no secret that men are more frequently arrested in…
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"NSA allowed to continue compiling phone records"
From Jurist: The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [official website] on Monday issued an order [order, PDF] allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website] to continue compiling telephone records of a California-based law firm....
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"Constitutional right to obtain exculpatory evidence from prosecutors extends to plea-bargain phase"
David Post has this post at The Volokh Conspiracy, discussing and excerpting Buffey v. Warden, opinion available here.
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