The top story this week is that Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton has been charged with DUI, per this story from the UPI and AP. Retton, 57, became the first American woman to win the all-around gymnastics title at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where she also won two silver and two bronze medals. Retton was stopped on May 17, 2025, in her hometown of Fairmont, West Virginia, allegedly with a container of wine in the passenger seat of her Porsche, and charged with driving under the influence, before being released on a personal recognizance bond. Read on for more criminal law news.
Case Summaries: N.C. Supreme Court (May 23, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Supreme Court released on May 23, 2025.
New Research on Juvenile Interventions and Reoffending
I recently had the opportunity to watch a webinar on the latest research about how protective factors and strength-based services impact reoffending among justice-involved youth. The webinar focused on the second brief (Impacts on Long-Term Youth Reoffending) from the Youth Protective Factors Study (hereinafter the Study). The Study offers interesting findings related to the way risk and protective factors work (or, spoiler alert, don’t work) to reduce reoffending. This research can help practitioners focus limited resources on system responses and interventions most likely to promote public safety.
Case Summaries: N.C. Court of Appeals (May 21, 2025)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on May 21, 2025. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to the present.
News Roundup
On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced it is planning to drop investigations into nearly two dozen police departments accused of civil rights violations. These include departments in Memphis, TN, Pheonix, AZ, Oklahoma City, OK, Trenton, NJ, Mount Vernon, NY, and the Louisiana State Police. The Department also announced it will drop consent decrees setting requirements for police training and establishing outside monitoring reached after incidents of police violence in Minneapolis, MN and Louisville, KY. The head of the Department’s civil rights division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said the Department is reviewing consent decrees and federal oversight arrangements in place with nearly a dozen other cities to determine if they should be abandoned as well. This is following an executive order signed last month directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to review all federal consent decrees and to “modify, rescind, or move to conclude” them within 60 days. Read on for more criminal law news.
The Prior Record Level Worksheet with Missing Convictions: A Persistent Ethical Dilemma
Suppose you are a defender representing a client charged with Possession of Firearm by Felon. You receive a plea offer in the case, along with the AOC-CR-600B, the “Worksheet” regularly used for calculating the Prior Record Level (PRL) before sentencing. You review the worksheet and notice that it makes no reference to a prior felony conviction for which your client served prison time. You know of this missing conviction because you regularly verify the information the State provides to you, and you saw the conviction in the relevant database. You also discussed the conviction with your client when interviewing him about his past experiences and record in prison. Without the prior conviction, your client would be sentenced as a PRL III for felony sentencing purposes, but with the conviction, your client would be sentenced as a PRL IV. The general practice in your judicial district is for both parties to sign the PRL Worksheet, stipulating to the information set forth on the form and agreeing with the defendant’s PRL classification as indicated.
How should you proceed?
In teaching felony defenders here at SOG, I’ve seen this ethical dilemma threaten to swallow up the allotted ethics hour on multiple occasions. It is a challenging issue that, like many other dilemmas, involves a clash between ethical obligations.
What Does it Mean for a Criminal Case if the Defendant is Legally Incompetent and Has a Court-Appointed Guardian?
Derek was twenty years old when he suffered a stroke. He lost and then subsequently regained his ability to speak and to perform simple tasks; however, he cannot manage important matters like his medical care and finances. Derek’s mom, Greta, successfully petitioned under G.S. Chapter 35A to have her son adjudicated incompetent and was appointed … Read more
News Roundup
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that drug overdose deaths in the U.S. declined significantly in 2024 as compared to 2023, reaching their lowest levels since 2019. Experts from the CDC state that increased funding from Congress has enhanced their ability to collect and analyze data, which in turn has allowed for more targeted and effective prevention efforts. Deaths from fentanyl fell by approximately 37%, while deaths from cocaine and psychostimulants also declined significantly. The declines were consistent across virtually all geographic regions.
Some experts attribute the changing trend to wider availability of the overdose-reversal drug naloxone as well as stepped-up treatment. Others contend the decline stems more from fewer people getting addicted in the first place.
Despite the encouraging news, drug overdoses remain the leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 18 and 44.
Read on for more criminal law news.
Immigration Detainers
An immigration detainer is one of the key tools that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses to apprehend individuals who come in contact with local and state law enforcement agencies. Sometimes, after a defendant has been arrested for a crime, an ICE officer will file an immigration detainer (Department of Homeland Security form I-247A) with the agency that has custody of the defendant. The detainer asks the agency to notify ICE when the defendant would otherwise be eligible for release and to hold the defendant for up to 48 hours thereafter to enable ICE to take custody of the defendant.
My colleague Jeff Welty blogged about immigration detainers several years ago. Recently, my colleagues and I have received a lot of questions about the scope of judicial officials’ authority when navigating immigration detainers. This post answers some of those questions.