Several interesting news items have cropped up recently. First, the United States Supreme Court decided District Attorney's Office v. Osborne, in which a 5-4 majority ruled that there is no constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. Having slogged through the whole decision, my sense is that it will have limited impact in North Carolina given the existence of G.S. 15A-269, which provides such a right, under certain circumstances, by statute. I did, however, find the reasoning to be noteworthy. In part, the majority concluded that there is no such constitutional right because most states have provided for post-conviction DNA testing by statute. So if most states weren't providing for testing, would there be a constitutional right to it? It seems odd to say -- outside the Eighth Amendment context, anyhow -- that the content of the Constitution depends on what one or another state legislature happens to have done. In any case, if you're hungry for more, but not hungry enough to read the opinion, you can check out this New York Times story. Second, a federal judge in Utah recently ruled that a defendant charged with possessing a firearm after having been convicted of a crime of domestic violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) is entitled to raise, as an affirmative defense, the argument that he poses no elevated danger and so is constitutionally entitled to possess a firearm in his home. The judge's opinion is available here, and a post at the Volokh Conspiracy blog about the [...]
Faculty Coordinators
