A UNC School of Government Blog
The court of appeals issued three opinions on Tuesday involving satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. In all three, offenders challenged trial court determinations that they had to enroll in SBM. As a threshold matter in each case the court of appeals considered whether the offender’s oral notice of appeal of the SBM determination was … Read more
Two of the topics I write about the most are probation and sex offenders. Today’s post is about both, answering a question that—somewhat to my surprise—comes up pretty frequently: Can a defendant who entered an Alford plea to a sex crime have his or her probation revoked for failing to accept responsibility for the crime … Read more
Jamie mentioned yesterday that the Supreme Court decided two important cases this week. Graham v. Florida, which Jamie covered yesterday, is the blockbuster, but United States v. Comstock is also worth discussing briefly. As I mentioned in a prior post, the issue in Comstock was the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 4248. That statute allows … Read more
I wrote about satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders ten times in 2009. The court of appeals’ recent decision in State v. Phillips gives me my first occasion to write about it in 2010. In Phillips, the defendant pled guilty to taking indecent liberties with a child under G.S. 14-202.1 and felonious child abuse by … Read more
There have been several interesting criminal law new stories this week. I want to focus mainly on one with a local connection, but I’ll note briefly this New York Times article that describes some research suggesting that probation and parole violations should be more frequent, more immediate, and less harsh; this Wired magazine article that … Read more
Considering how close we are to the holidays, there’s been a surprising amount of activity in the criminal law world lately. Stories of interest include the following: 1. The Bowden saga continues, but appears to be headed for a decisive conclusion: the North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to review, on an expedited basis, the … Read more
I have noted in numerous prior posts (most recently, here) that the statutes governing satellite-based monitoring (SBM) determination hearings (G.S. 14-208.40A and -208.40B) are unclear as to whether the court may, when deciding whether a particular offense was “aggravated,” consider only the elements of the conviction offense, or whether it may also consider the facts … Read more
The last round of opinions from the court of appeals included three related to satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. None of them broke any major new ground, but two more dissents show that nothing is fully settled in this rapidly evolving area. In State v. Gardner, the court found the defendant, who was recently … Read more
I mentioned earlier that the court of appeals decided two satellite-based monitoring cases this week. I discussed State v. Morrow on Wednesday. Today I’ll cover State v. Stines. In Stines, the defendant was convicted of taking indecent liberties with children in 1997 and again in 2004. He was sentenced to active time for the 2004 … Read more
It’s time to round up some news. First, the News and Observer recently commented on President Obama’s failure to nominate any additional North Carolinians for the Fourth Circuit — a court on which Tar Heels are wildly underrepresented — despite several vacancies. Of course, the White House has been moving rather deliberately on judicial nominations … Read more