It's been two weeks since the last news roundup, so there's a lot to report: 1. Superior Court Judges Catherine Eagles and Ripley Rand have been confirmed by the Senate to new federal jobs in the Middle District of North Carolina, Rand as United States Attorney and Eagles as a district judge. Congratulations to both! 2. The appellate division of the North Carolina court system has made some changes to its website. Among the cool new features is the option to subscribe to email notification of new opinions, which you can do here. Of course, we'll continue to blog about the most noteworthy decisions. 3. The News and Observer has had a number of SBI-related stories recently, and also ran this interesting item about the cost of defending capital murder cases. Apparently, a recent Charlotte case resulted in $475,000 in defense costs at the trial level. 4. The "instant runoff" election for the court of appeals seat currently held by Judge Cressie Thigpen has resulted in a not-so-instant recount. Preliminary indications are that former court of appeals judge Doug McCullough will be returning to the bench. 5. Nationally, there have been some interesting developments regarding the death penalty. In Oklahoma, drug shortages led authorities to use a different pharmaceutical "cocktail" in an execution conducted last night, apparently without incident. In Texas, a trial judge began to conduct a hearing about the constitutionality of the death penalty in Texas -- apparently in response to a defense motion to bar the death penalty [...]
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