If you face criminal charges, you must understand the full scope of a conviction. Financial penalties or jail time will be devastating enough, yet some of the consequences will last much longer. A conviction will impinge on several civil rights, aside from your right...
Criminal Law
What is mistaken identity? How to prove it in a criminal case?
It is not unusual to be accused of a crime you did not commit. If this happens, the worst mistake you can make is to assume that you do not have to do anything about the accusation since you did not commit the offense after all. Mistaken identity happens when a crime...
How many employees steal from work?
When you think of major theft from a business, you probably consider things like embezzlement. This may happen when an accountant doctors the books to hide the fact that they took tens of thousands of dollars from the company. It is a large-scale crime, and while it...
Do police officers stereotype teens?
When a police officer sees a teenager, that teenager may be wary of the officer as an authority figure. They may not trust them. They may assume that the officer sees them the same way. Does this happen? Over the years, there has undoubtedly been evidence that the...
When can the police enter your home without a warrant?
Once police officers suspect that you've committed some kind of criminal activity, they may take aggressive steps to collect evidence against you. Often, searching your home will play a big part in the process of building a case against you. You probably know that if...
What’s the status of medical marijuana in North Carolina?
Despite its federal status as a Schedule 1 drug, marijuana has dozens of known medical uses. The Schedule 1 classification means that there is no known medical use for marijuana and that it poses a high risk of abuse and danger to the public. Many people disagree with...
What does a DWI conviction mean for your professional licensing?
State licensing for professionals helps protect the public from incompetent professionals and fraudulent misrepresentation of someone's skills, education or professional background. Professionals in fields ranging from nursing to accounting need to retain a license to...
What you need to know if you’re offered immunity
You’ve probably seen people on TV shows who have been involved in some type of criminal activity being offered immunity by prosecutors for providing information on “bigger fish” – those who have done far more serious things than they have. This happens frequently with...
How serious are college crimes? Do you have to worry about long-term consequences?
As a parent of a child who has just gotten into trouble with the law, you may have many questions about what will happen next. It’s realistic to expect that your child will have some immediate consequences if they are convicted of a crime. What many parents fail to...
What consequences can possession of a fake ID have for you?
As a college student in North Carolina, you purchased a fake ID online so that you could drink and purchase alcohol when you went out with friends. You hardly gave it a thought — until you got busted trying to use it to get into a campus bar. Now what? You’ve never...