SOG Staff

With experts predicting that this Fourth of July weekend will be one of the busiest travel weekends in history, the News Roundup has tips for staying safe and obeying the laws on North Carolina roads. The NCDOT wants North Carolinians to be aware that new provisions in the State’s motor vehicle laws will go into effect beginning today, July 1st. Notably, registered mopeds now are required to carry liability insurance, and a new late fee has gone into effect for vehicle owners who fail to pay their registration renewal by the expiration date. Motorists can avoid road rage by taking note of construction work that may affect travel lanes along the interstates and lead to frustrating delays. Finally, the DOT warns that celebrations can quickly go from festive to fatal if you choose to drive after drinking – law enforcement agencies across the state are participating in Operation Firecracker, a campaign to get drunk drivers off the road. Stay safe, stay free, and keep reading for more news.

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Last week the North Carolina Department of Public Safety announced the creation of a new Youthful Offender Program and the elimination of the use of solitary confinement for offenders under the age of 18 who are confined in adult facilities.  An article from the News and Observer indicates that W. David Guice, Commissioner of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice, has said that solitary confinement doesn’t result in positive behavioral change and that prison officials have been reducing its use even with adult inmates.  The mission of the Youthful Offender Program, which will be operated at Foothills Correctional Institution, is to “identify criminogenic risks and needs, and address those areas in order to promote public safety and enhance youth outcomes through education, behavioral, health treatment, life skills, and family/community reunification services.”  Keep reading for more news.

Sadly, the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning is the major criminal law news story this week.  Forty-nine victims were killed, fifty-three others were wounded, and the gunman died in a shootout with police.  The shooting is being characterized as a terror attack and a hate crime.  The shooter reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and the group has taken credit for the attack.  The attack is one of the deadliest criminal homicides in American history, but is not a unique example of hate-fueled violence in our country.  Keep reading for more news.

The case of a former Stanford University student, Brock Turner, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman at a party on the university’s campus is receiving national attention this week because Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail and three years of probation.  The case is viewed by some as an example of a privileged white person receiving an unjustifiably lenient sentence for a serious crime.  The Wall Street Journal has an overview article here. The Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge who sentenced Turner, Aaron Persky, has come under fire; an online petition calling for his recall has received nearly a million signatures.  The victim’s statement to the court, largely directed at Turner, has become popular online and is available here.  An editorial from the San Jose Mercury News arguing that Turner’s sentence was too light is available here.  An opinion piece from the same paper, written prior to sentencing, arguing that a jail rather than a prison sentence would be appropriate is available here, and a similar piece from the National Association of Public Defenders is available here.  Keep reading for more news.

Reuters reports that following rehearing en banc of a case decided last year, the Fourth Circuit has ruled that police do not need a warrant to obtain historical cell site location information from cell phone service providers.  The majority opinion concluded that the third party doctrine precludes a person from claiming a legitimate expectation of privacy in the location information because it has been voluntarily conveyed to the service provider.  The court’s opinion is available here.  Keep reading for more news.

As the Baltimore Sun reports, a criminal trial against one of the Baltimore police officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray last year ended this week with the officer, Edward Nero, being acquitted on all charges.  According to the report, Nero’s acquittal on several misdemeanors came after a five-day bench trial that involved a novel theory of assault based on Nero detaining Gray without justification.  The Baltimore Sun also has an opinion piece from former Baltimore police officers that argues that Nero, characterized as having only a tangential role in the incident that culminated in Gray’s death, should not have been criminally charged.  Cases against other officers facing more serious charges are scheduled to be tried in the future.  Keep reading for more news.    

The New York Times and Right on Crime are each reporting that South Carolina and Louisiana appear poised to raise the upper age of juvenile court jurisdiction in those states from 16- to 17-years-old.  The change would mean that most 17-year-old offenders would participate in juvenile court rather than adult court, and is in line with a bipartisan national trend towards raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction.  The article from the Times notes that North Carolina is one of only two states where 16-year-old offenders are automatically treated as adults in the criminal justice system.  The Criminal Investigation & Adjudication Committee of the N.C. Commission on the Administration of Law & Justice is working on a raise the age proposal for North Carolina. Jessica Smith, Reporter to the Committee, presented a draft report on the issue to the Committee last Friday. Information about the Committee’s work is available here.  Keep reading for more news.  

This week the Tenth Circuit ruled that a condition of supervised release that required a man convicted of distributing child pornography to complete a sex offender treatment program violated the Fifth Amendment.  The particular program at issue included a sexual history polygraph that required the man to answer questions about whether he had committed sexual crimes for which he was never charged.  The program also required him to “sign an agreement instructing the treatment provider to report any discovered sexual crimes to appropriate authorities.”  The court determined that the threat of being returned to prison for refusing to answer the polygraph questions, and thus violating supervised release, unconstitutionally compelled the man to be a witness against himself.  Keep reading for more news.

Earlier this year, the News Roundup noted that the United States Supreme Court held in Hurst v. Florida that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme was unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment because it permitted a judge to increase a defendant’s maximum authorized punishment based on the judge’s own factfinding rather than that of a jury.  The Defender Manual has an overview of the development of the Court’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence on this issue here.  Now the Florida Supreme Court has to decide what to do about the nearly 400 inmates awaiting execution who were sentenced under the unconstitutional scheme.  The Palm Beach Post reports that former Florida Supreme Court justices were “among a handful of leading lawyers,” including two former American Bar Association presidents, calling for the court to impose life sentences on all of the inmates in a blanket commutation.

Closer to home, the North Carolina Court of Appeals decided that old G.S. 14-27.4A(c) (now codified as G.S. 14-27.28(c)), a statute which “purports to provide the trial court with the unfettered ability to lengthen a defendant’s sentence .  . . with no input from a jury,” is unconstitutional based on the same line of Supreme Court cases implicated in Hurst.  The case is State v. Singletary, and, as the opinion notes at page 28, Jessie and John have predicted for some time that the North Carolina statute likely was unconstitutional.  Keep reading for more news:

The North Carolina General Assembly’s short session began Monday.  On the first day of the session, supporters and opponents of HB2 held well attended dueling rallies in Raleigh according to this report from the Charlotte Business Journal.  The Wall Street Journal has a national perspective on the rallies here. Democratic legislators filed a bill to repeal HB2, but Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger has stated that repeal is not on the Republican agenda. The News and Observer reports that 54 protestors opposed to HB2 were arrested inside the Legislative building after refusing to leave House Speaker Tim Moore’s office and the area around it.  Keep reading for more news.