Honored to be featured as North Carolina Advocates for Justice’s Rising Star, October 2019. Check out my Q&A with some of my thoughts as a career defender at the link below, and included here. Much respect to NCAJ for their great work in the criminal justice community in the state, and for the recognition. NCAJ Trial Briefs, October 2019...
Continue ReadingThe Limits of Police Power in a Traffic Stop Let’s say you’re pulled over for speeding. The cop comes up to your window and says he clocked you going 74 in a 65 (leaving aside for the moment that everyone drives faster than that during rush hour, including the same cop who pulled you over). It’s 1:00 in the...
Continue ReadingIn case you thought you were free travel on public roads without having to concern yourself with a baseless intrusion by law enforcement, rest assured that the various Wake County law enforcement agencies are still actively hosting DWI checkpoints in the area. While they occur with less frequency now than they did a couple of years ago when the...
Continue ReadingThree Best Rated recently ranked attorney Benjamin Hiltzheimer as one of the three best DWI lawyers in Raleigh, North Carolina. Attorney Hiltzheimer has represented hundreds of individuals charged with DWIs in Raleigh, as well as Durham, Orange, Chatham, and Alamance Counties. Mr. Hiltzheimer brings a decade of litigation experience to bear on each case he takes on, and takes...
Continue ReadingA SWAT team investigating a young man allegedly in possession of a small quantity of drugs tossed a flash grenade into a baby’s crib, leaving a hole in his chest with critical burns in a pool of blood in a singed crib. The police denied the mother access to her burned child while they ravaged the house looking for...
Continue ReadingNew study estimates false conviction rate of death row inmates at 4.1%. In case we need another reason to abolish the death penalty. Abstract The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these...
Continue ReadingContinued from previous post: Rule #3: You do not have to blow into a portable/handheld breathalyzer unit, and you almost certainly should not. Many people mistakenly believe that if an officer asks an individual suspected of driving while impaired, or driving after drinking alcohol, that the driver is required to blow into the portable breathalyzer on the scene. In...
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