Duke took it on the chin last night, losing to a confident, athletic Arizona team. That's the basketball roundup. Now for the criminal law roundup: 1. The Conference of District Attorneys has completed a review of the SBI lab cases identified as problematic in the Swecker report. The Conference's press release states that the review "found no cases where the guilt of the defendant was called into question," because in all the cases (a) that resulted in a conviction and (b) for which a file could be located, there was "additional overwhelming evidence of guilt including confessions, eyewitnesses, ballistics, DNA or a combination thereof." The News and Observer story here contains several defense lawyers' take on the review, and an editorial here describes the review as "suspect." In related news, the General Assembly is moving forward with a bill to reform the workings of the lab. The News and Observer story is here and the legislation itself is here. 2. I noticed an interesting letter to the editor in the News and Observer this week. It's available online here, and it claims that data "from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center shows that cellphone driving provides the same risk as driving drunk, and does so whether the phone is hand-held or hands-free." It's worth checking out the graph accompanying the letter; the author of the letter is asking the General Assembly to ban all cell phone use while driving, including hands-free use. We've blogged before about some of the studies on [...]
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