North Carolina Criminal Law

The Statewide Misdemeanant Confinement Program took a hit this week in the court of appeals. In Richmond County Board of Education v. Cowell, about half of the money that comes […]

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Two revisions to North Carolina’s primary jail credit statute, G.S. 15-196.1, will kick in on December 1, 2015. Both of them benefit defendants.

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Local procedures vary when it comes to deferred prosecutions. In general, there’s nothing wrong with that; the district attorney has broad discretion in the deferred prosecution realm. Lately, though, several people […]

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Come December 1, dips will be the new dunks for Structured Sentencing misdemeanants.

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Once a plea is entered pursuant to a plea agreement, the parties are bound by the agreement and failure to comply with it constitutes a breach. Occasionally questions arise about […]

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Do DWI sentences really get cut in half? Can DWI inmates be paroled? What happens when the minimum and maximum sentence for a DWI are the same? These questions and more are answered in today’s […]

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North Carolina has a lot of habitual offender laws: habitual felon, violent habitual felon, armed habitual felon, habitual breaking and entering, habitual impaired driving, and habitual misdemeanor assault. A question […]

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If you’ve been dragging your feet about having an old DWI expunged, you had better hurry up. A law enacted last week removes convictions for offenses involving impaired driving from […]

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At a recent conference, a judge confessed to me that he and his fellow judges drive the clerks crazy because they all pronounce judgment differently. They use different words to […]

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Not many sentences come from the aggravated range—four percent in Fiscal Year 2013/14, according to the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. But when you use the aggravated range, […]

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