NC Criminal Law

Shea Denning on Friday, September 11th, 2026

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy case was in its seventh day of deliberations when we posted last week’s News Roundup. Later that day, the trial judge declared a mistrial; jurors had reported on three occasions that they were unable to reach a verdict. The prosecutor said there would not be an immediate decision about whether to retry 36-year-old Clancy for killing her three young children. The AP...

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The key question for double jeopardy analysis is whether each offense requires proof of an element that is not contained in the other — if not, they are the same offense and double jeopardy bars a successive prosecution.

A court should allow a defendant who moves to withdraw a guilty plea before sentencing to withdraw the plea for any “fair and just” reason.

An information is an accusation drafted by the prosecutor and filed in superior court, charging one or more criminal offenses. An information may be filed only if the defendant waives indictment. 

If evidence is excluded by the trial court, the proponent of the evidence generally must provide an adequate offer of proof regarding the nature of the excluded evidence in order to argue on appeal that the evidence should have been allowed. See G.S. 8C-103(a)(2).

G.S. 15A-134 provides that if a charged offense occurred partly in North Carolina and partly in another state, a person charged with that offense may be tried in North Carolina only if he or she has not already been placed in jeopardy for the same offense by the other state.