The front page of the News and Observer today reports that Assistant United States Attorney Jennifer May-Parker has been nominated by President Obama to serve as a federal district judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Jennifer was one of the prosecutors I faced in my first federal jury trial. She is smart, professional, level-headed, and will make an excellent judge. Here’s hoping for a speedy confirmation. In other news: 1. The Racial Justice Act officially has been repealed. Signing the repeal, Governor McCrory described the RJA as “seriously flawed.” The bill that contains the repeal makes several other changes intended to allow executions to resume. I doubt that will happen anytime soon, for reasons I may detail in a future post. 2. One person who needn’t worry about the resumption of executions is Patricia Jennings, who was just spared the death penalty and resentenced to life in prison based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. She was on death row for 23 years, convicted of killing her elderly husband, after a trial apparently so full of salacious details that the Jodi Arias case seems tame by comparison. 3. A bit of good news from the state crime lab: it just announced that it has met international standard ISO 17025, “which provides a global basis for laboratory accreditation in management and technical requirements.” The lab also noted in a press release that it remains “accredited by the nation’s largest accrediting group, American Society of Crime Lab Director Lab [...]
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