A UNC School of Government Blog
Jamie Markham 
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
In Part I of this post, I set out the rule from Bounds v. Smith that “the fundamental constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison authorities . . . to provid[e] prisoners with adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law.” 430 U.S. 817, 828 (1977). I then surveyed … Read more
In 1977, in a case arising out of North Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States held that “the fundamental constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison authorities . . . to provid[e] prisoners with adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law.” Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1335, “[w]hen a conviction or sentence imposed in superior court has been set aside on direct review or collateral attack, the court may not impose a new sentence for the same offense, or for a different offense based on the same conduct, which is more severe than the prior sentence less the portion … 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
Can a defendant be ordered to pay restitution based on offenses that did not result in a conviction? Of course a defendant should not be ordered to pay restitution for a charge on which he or she was acquitted. State v. Bass, 53 N.C. App. 40 (1981) (restitution order for alleged food stamp overpayments was … Read more