A UNC School of Government Blog
Jamie Markham 
I’m in Asheville for the next few days, but I wanted to write briefly about an important case decided by the Court of Appeals last week. In State v. Bare, the court held that satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders is not punishment, and therefore does not implicate the Ex Post Facto Clause. The defendant … Read more
Last week the News and Observer ran an article about a legislative proposal to send more inmates to county jails instead of DOC facilities. A separate part of the plan proposed to reduce or eliminate reimbursement payments the state sends to the counties for certain inmates held in the jails. Both proposals appear to have … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1344(d), a “sentence activated upon revocation of probation commences on the day probation is revoked and runs concurrently with any other period of probation, parole, or imprisonment to which the defendant is subject during that period unless the revoking judge specifies that it is to run consecutively with the other period.” In State … Read more
Last week the court of appeals decided State v. Swann, concluding (among other things) that a prosecutor’s statement alone is insufficient to support a restitution award. A lot of recent cases have reached the same conclusion – State v. Replogle, 181 N.C. App. 579 (2007), State v. Calvino, 179 N.C. App. 219 (2006), and State … Read more
Under G.S. 14-208.12A, registered sex offenders who are not required to register for life can petition the superior court to terminate the registration requirement after 10 years. (The requirement to petition for deregistration came into being in 2006; before then, 10-year registrations terminated automatically after the requisite time had passed.) North Carolina’s sex offender registry … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1345(c), a preliminary hearing on a probation violation must be held within seven working days of a probationer’s arrest to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that the probationer violated a condition of probation, unless the probationer waives the preliminary hearing or a final hearing is held first. I’m told the … Read more
I am occasionally asked about the adult sentencing consequences of a defendant’s juvenile history. The first-order answer is easy: juvenile adjudications never count toward felony prior record level or misdemeanor prior conviction level. This is true of all juvenile adjudications, even those for acts that would be Class A – E felonies if committed by … Read more
Some time ago I prepared a flow chart that included all the information about sex offender registration and monitoring I could reasonably (or maybe even slightly unreasonably) cram onto one page. My goal was to create an at-a-glance reference tool that included all the effective dates—crucial for applying the law properly—that appear in the patchwork … Read more
I am frequently asked about what convictions may count toward a defendant’s prior record level in prosecutions under the habitual felon law and other similar laws, like habitual impaired driving. For habitual felon prosecutions, the answer is pretty clear—G.S. 14-7.6 says convictions used to establish a person’s status as an habitual felon may not also … Read more
One of our loyal readers asked for our take on the provision in the motion for appropriate relief (MAR) statute that allows a defendant to seek relief at any time when “[t]here has been a significant change in law, either substantive or procedural, applied in the proceedings leading to the defendant’s conviction or sentence, and … Read more