A UNC School of Government Blog
Jamie Markham 
I am sometimes asked if a conviction for which prayer for judgment has been continued (a PJC) can be expunged. It’s a sensible question, given—as I’ll discuss in a moment—that a PJC is treated like a conviction for most purposes in North Carolina. A person has virtually the same incentive to seek expungement of a … 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
Back in March I wrote a post on restitution to government agencies, setting out the general rule in G.S. 15A-1340.37(c) that “[n]o government agency shall benefit by way of restitution except for particular damage or loss to it over and above normal operating costs . . . .” I mentioned in that post that I would write … Read more
The court of appeals issued its decision yesterday in a case called State v. Miller. It answers a question I get asked a lot: Can an active sentence be served in noncontinous periods? The answer: No, it can’t—at least not as a true active sentence. In Miller, the defendant received a 30-day suspended sentence in … Read more
Some crimes have their own sentencing regime—impaired driving, drug trafficking, and first-degree murder to name a few. There are also crimes that fall under Structured Sentencing but that also have additional punishment provisions built in. One such crime is concealment of merchandise in mercantile establishments, better known as shoplifting. Under G.S. 14-72.1(e), the punishment for … Read more
In several prior posts (including this one) I provided a link to the Department of Correction’s administrative regulation on sentence reduction credits. I’ve written about the credits applicable in impaired driving cases, and just last week I wrote about a Supreme Court case on good time credit in the federal prison system. It occurs to … Read more
The Supreme Court issued its opinion in Barber v. Thomas on Monday, upholding the manner in which the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) calculates “good time credits” under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). That law says that a prisoner who is serving a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year can receive up to 54 … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1343(b1)(10), a court may, in addition to the regular conditions of probation and any statutory special conditions, require a defendant to “[s]atisfy any other conditions determined by the court to be reasonably related to his rehabilitation.” Any ad hoc conditions must also bear a relationship to the defendant’s crime. State v. Cooper, 304 … Read more
The Supreme Court of the United States issued two noteworthy opinions yesterday. In United States v. Comstock (a case that originated out of North Carolina) the Court reversed the Fourth Circuit and upheld the federal government’s power to civilly commit a mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoner beyond the date he would otherwise be released … Read more
When an inmate is convicted of multiple crimes and given consecutive active sentences, does the order in which the judge stacks them matter? A number of people have told me they spend considerable time thinking about the way consecutive sentences are ordered, based on a concern that the order affects the way the Department of … Read more