Under North Dakota law, courts have authority to award restitution to the victim of a crime after holding a hearing on the matter and considering the statutory factors provided in N.D.C.C. § 12.1-32-08. In 2016, North Dakota voters adopted Marsy’s Law, or North Dakota Constitution…
After the United States Supreme Court decided Birchfield, which concluded States could not punish the refusal to comply with a request for a warrantless blood test, the landscape of laws relating to driving under the influence in North Dakota and Minnesota have changed significantly. First,…
In 2015, new expungement laws came into effect under Minnesota law. Under Minn. Stat § 609A.03, an individual with a criminal record can see expungement if he or she petitions the court. The court may expunge misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors convictions if the petitioner has…
Can law enforcement take your personal property, sell it, and keep the proceeds? Under current North Dakota law, if law enforcement believes the property was used in a crime, this is legal. Regardless of whether a person is convicted of the crime alleged, police can…
In State v. Ballard, 2016 ND 8, the defendant, Jeremy Ballard was on unsupervised probation as a result of pleading guilty to two misdemeanor drug crimes. A few months later, a deputy sheriff saw Ballard driving a vehicle with two passengers. The deputy knew Ballard…
Marsy’s Law is not a law at all, but is actually part of the North Dakota Constitution as of December 8, 2016. North Dakota’s voters approved a new constitutional amendment about victims’ rights called Marsy’s Law. Despite opposition from attorneys, state officials, and other groups,…
For many years the North Dakota State University Campus Police and the Fargo Police Department operated under a Memorandum of Understanding, which essentially granted NDSU Police to patrol and make arrests anywhere within the City of Fargo. Several universities and municipalities, including UND and the…
Despite the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Missouri v. McNeely and essentially protecting operating while intoxicated (OWI) defendants nationwide from being forced to take blood tests without their consent unless police have a warrant, 13 states, including North Dakota and Minnesota, have made it a crime to refuse to take such a test. The United State's Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases on whether it is a constitutional violation to criminalize refusal to submit to warrantless blood tests. The two leading cases include Birchfield v. North Dakota and Bernard v. Minnesota.
