NC Criminal Law

Daniel Spiegel on Friday, December 19th, 2025

Additional information came to light last week in the case against Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, during a key pretrial hearing on a motion to suppress. At issue was whether the search of Mangione’s backpack in an Altoona, PA, McDonald’s five days...

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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 defendant has a Sixth Amendment right to counsel during interrogation by an officer or an informant about a pending charge after adversarial judicial proceedings for that charge have begun.

Two or more offenses may be joined for trial when the offenses are based on the same act or transaction or on a series of acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a single scheme or plan. See G.S. 15A-926(a).

A judge may accept an Alford plea, in which a defendant pleads guilty but does not admit committing the offense and protests his or her innocence, if the record strongly supports the defendant’s guilt and the defendant intelligently concludes that it is in his or her interest to enter such a plea. The consent of the prosecutor is not required. 

The court may take judicial notice of adjudicative facts that are not subject to any reasonable dispute if the facts are common knowledge in the jurisdiction or can be easily determined by reference to reliable sources.