A UNC School of Government Blog
When a defendant pleads guilty, he waives a variety of rights, including the right to a trial, the right to confront the witnesses against him, and so on. The waiver of those rights is inherent in a guilty plea — there can’t be a guilty plea without such a waiver. If a defendant doesn’t just … Read more
I mentioned earlier that the court of appeals decided two satellite-based monitoring cases this week. I discussed State v. Morrow on Wednesday. Today I’ll cover State v. Stines. In Stines, the defendant was convicted of taking indecent liberties with children in 1997 and again in 2004. He was sentenced to active time for the 2004 … Read more
It seems like every batch of new opinions from the court of appeals includes at least one case on satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Yesterday’s batch had two. State v. Morrow involved a defendant convicted of indecent liberties with children in November of 2006. He was sentenced to probation, which was ultimately revoked in … Read more
After a grand jury returns a true bill of indictment, should an order for arrest (OFA) issue as a matter of course? Looking at the OFA form, you might think so: it has eight check boxes, each of which provides a possible basis for the issuance of an OFA, such as a defendant’s failure to … Read more
Regular readers know the court of appeals has decided a lot of cases recently dealing with satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. Though many issues remain undecided, my sense is that some of the districts that were postponing SBM hearings to allow the appellate courts to weigh in on a few things are now moving … Read more
How long can a defendant be on probation for a single conviction? A. Five years. B. Eight years. C. It depends. The best answer is C. A judge can sentence any defendant (community or intermediate, misdemeanant or felon) to probation for up to five years on a finding that a period longer than the statutory … Read more
Like many lawyers, I served on a law review when I was a law student. It was a good experience: I became intimately familiar with the rules of legal citation, was exposed to some areas of law that I otherwise would not have been, and of course, burnished my resume. But most of the articles … Read more
My colleague Michael Crowell recently published a paper on judicial recusal, available here as a free download. It includes a discussion of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, about which I previously blogged here and here. But it goes far beyond that, of course, providing a terrific primer on … Read more
Back in July the court of appeals decided State v. Hubbard, a probation revocation case that I mentioned in passing but never really discussed in depth. In Hubbard the defendant’s probation officer filed a violation report alleging that Mr. Hubbard violated probation by being “so drunk that he could hardly walk” during a curfew check. … Read more
Further Update: See Shea Denning’s post here about State v. Mumford, in which the court of appeals held that “logically inconsistent and legally contradictory” verdicts cannot stand. It has the potential to expand significantly the circumstances under which inconsistent verdicts are grounds for a new trial. Update: One more type of inconsistent verdict is the … Read more