Last Friday, the Criminal Justice Section of the North Carolina Bar Association presented its annual awards for excellence in prosecution and criminal defense. The prosecutor award went to Assistant United States Attorney Sandra Hairston, who serves in the Middle District of North Carolina and who regularly outlawyered me when I was doing federal criminal defense work. The defense attorney award went to Mark Owens, Jr. of Greenville, who this NCBA press release describes as the “elder statesman” of the Pitt County bar. Congratulations to both winners. WRAL reports on State Crime Lab woes, reforms. WRAL reports here that the Crime Lab “has instituted various changes to help clear a backlog of evidence awaiting testing but that its biggest problem persists – having enough funding to retain analysts who are taking higher-paying jobs.” Among the reforms mentioned was “bringing corporate workflow ideas” into the lab to make its operations more efficient. 88% of judges think they are above average. This Above the Law post discusses a study about whether 167 federal magistrate judges were subject to common cognitive biases like the anchoring effect, hindsight bias, and egocentric bias. Egocentric bias is the tendency to overestimate one’s own ability, and the study found that 88% of judges reported that they were above average judges. They’re like children in Lake Wobegon, apparently. What not to wear, Oklahoma edition. An Oklahoma legislator has introduced a bill that would make it a crime to wear hooded sweatshirts, or anything else with a hood, in public. Slate [...]
Faculty Coordinators
