A UNC School of Government Blog
Jamie Markham 
After Alyson’s post from yesterday, I thought it might be a good time to recap some of the other sentence credit issues our courts have addressed over the years. These decisions are grounded in G.S. 15-196.1, which requires credit for the “total amount of time a defendant has spent, committed to or in confinement in … Read more
Editor’s note: This post was originally intended to be a response to a comment to a post about sentences of banishment. The initial post, here, considered a federal sentence that forbade the defendants from a particular county during their supervised release, and concluded that North Carolina courts lack the power to impose a similar sentence. … Read more
A life sentence has not always meant a person’s natural life in North Carolina—probably. Under G.S. 14-2 as it existed for offenses committed after April 8, 1974, but before July 1, 1978, a “sentence of life imprisonment shall be considered as a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 80 years in the State’s prison.” … Read more
The First Circuit recently upheld a district court’s imposition of a special condition of supervised release banning two convicted drug dealers from Suffolk County, Massachusetts (basically, Boston) during the entirety of their eight- and twelve-year periods of supervision (United States v. Garrasteguy). The case caught my eye for two reasons. First, that’s a long time … Read more
An article in last Saturday’s paper talked about Governor Perdue’s proposed changes to the probation system. Part of her plan would give probation officers access to probationers’ juvenile records, which reminded me of a related issue I have been meaning to write about: using juvenile adjudications as an aggravating factor at sentencing. Under G.S. 15A-1340.16(d)(18a), … Read more
Over the past few months I’ve been getting some really interesting questions about contempt. Disclaimer: The real experts on our faculty when it comes to contempt are John Saxon, Michael Crowell, and Cheryl Howell—I’m just dabbling here. But there’s a connection to my field (sentencing), in that many of the questions I’m getting relate to … Read more
It has become clear to me in my work with judges and lawyers around the state that use of prayer for judgment continued—a practice virtually unique to North Carolina, at least by that name—varies. The long-running James Johnson case in Wilson concluded last week with a PJC (story here), prompting me to make the first … Read more
With the growing prison population and the shrinking budget, there’s some talk of changes to North Carolina’s sentencing laws. An article in the paper last week made general reference to sentencing alternatives proposed by the Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. I thought people might be interested in knowing a little more about the specifics of … Read more
In addition to sentencing in the mitigated range of the Structured Sentencing grid, there are two ways defendants can receive more lenient punishment in North Carolina: extraordinary mitigation and substantial assistance. Each law applies only in certain circumstances, and sometimes there’s confusion between the two. Extraordinary mitigation—or, more precisely, Dispositional Deviation for Extraordinary Mitigation under … Read more
A number of people have asked me whether the United States Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Oregon v. Ice (07-901) has any impact on North Carolina sentencing law. The short answer is, No. In Ice, the latest chapter in the Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), saga, a 5–4 majority of the Justices held … Read more