A couple of news items caught struck me during this holiday-shortened week. Impact of Riley on pending cases. I’ve started to have questions about the impact of Riley v. California, the Supreme Court case barring cell phone searches incident to arrest, on pending cases. The analysis is a bit of a long story. A good place to start is with this blog post on the Volokh Conspiracy, and its discussion of whether the exclusionary rule should apply to cell phone searches done in good faith pre-Riley. A complete discussion in North Carolina would also need to include State v. Carter, the case that rejected, under the state constitution, the Leon good-faith-reliance-on-a-search-warrant exception to the exclusionary rule. LegalZoom bill goes zoom, zoom? The legislature has made some progress on a budget but it isn’t done yet. Meanwhile, a few other bills of interest remain alive. One is H 663, which has passed the House and is being considered by the Senate. It would define the practice of law to exclude “[t]he design, creation . . . publication, distribution, display, or sale, including by means of an Internet Web site, of self-help legal written materials, books, documents, templates, forms, computer software, or similar products if the products clearly and conspicuously state that the products are not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.” In other words, it’s a LegalZoom bill. Perhaps predictably, the North Carolina Bar Association opposes it. LegalZoom’s not much help with criminal law matters yet, but general practitioners should [...]
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