North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

As the Charlotte Observer reports, former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. died on Thursday after a period of deteriorating health.  The Observer report notes that Lake’s intense interest in preventing or rectifying wrongful convictions led to the establishment of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission and made the state a national model for conviction review.  Lake served on the court for 12 years and was Chief Justice from 2001 to 2006.  He was 85 years old.  Keep reading for more news.

The Supreme Court of North Carolina held in State v. Grady, ___ N.C. ___ (2019), that satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders is unconstitutional as applied to any unsupervised person who was ordered to enroll in SBM solely because he or she is a recidivist. By unsupervised, the court meant a person not on probation, parole, or post-release supervision. Today’s post takes a closer look at the Grady decision and what it may mean for North Carolina’s SBM program going forward.