Latest posts in category Sentencing on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

I recorded another whiteboard-style presentation on sentencing law. Today, the focus is on how active sentences for Class B1–E felonies play out in practice.

The murder of three young, gifted students in Chapel Hill Tuesday evening has generated a local, national, and international outpouring of grief and outrage. Deah Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, were shot dead in the Finley Forest condominium where newlyweds Deah and Yusor lived. A neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, fled the area after the shooting, but later turned himself into law enforcement officers. Hicks is charged with first degree murder in their deaths, and is being held without bond in Raleigh’s Central Prison. Police say that the killings were motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute about, of all things, parking. Nevertheless, many, including Yusor and Razan’s father, suspect it also may have been motivated by the fact that the three were Muslims. Yusor regularly wore a headscarf—an outward manifestation of her faith.

These days, you can find an online instructional video for pretty much anything. Cooking techniques, auto repair, differential calculus. Why not criminal sentencing? Today’s post is my first attempt at […]

In the course of robbing a convenience store, a man restrains a 17-year-old clerk. Suppose the parties work out a plea to second-degree kidnapping. Everything is fine until the judge advises the defendant of the maximum permissible punishment for his Class E crime: 136 months. “136 months?” his lawyer said, puzzled. “I thought it would be 88.” “It would be,” the court replied, “if this crime didn’t require registration as a sex offender.”

A new publication, the North Carolina Sentencing Handbook with Felony, Misdemeanor, and DWI Sentencing Grids, 2014–2015, is available from the School of Government. The booklet updates last year’s North Carolina Structured Sentencing Handbook. Like its predecessor, it contains instructions on felony sentencing (including drug trafficking) and misdemeanor sentencing, the sentencing grids themselves, and various appendices that may be helpful in your work.

My choice of topic for today’s post may or may not have been influenced by the fact that I’m growing a beard. Reviews are mixed, ranging from nonspecific acknowledgment (“You have a beard!”) to good-natured derision (“Did you lose a bet?”). Jeff says I’m a pair of skinny jeans away from becoming a hipster. Kidding aside, today’s post is about the serious subject of whether prison officials must permit an inmate to grow a beard in accordance with his sincere religious beliefs. The Supreme Court held this week in Holt v. Hobbs that they must.

DWI arrests in North Carolina’s capital city are on the rise. The Wake County district attorney’s office expects to prosecute around 7,000 DWI cases this fiscal year—2,000 more than it handled in 2013-14.  The increased arrests result from beefed up patrol activity made possible by federal grants. And there is some speculation that the decline in fatal alcohol-related accidents in Raleigh from the previous year may be related to the additional arrests. Yet people continue to drive while impaired in Raleigh and elsewhere in North Carolina, sometimes with tragic consequences. And every DWI charge adds a court case to an already crowded district court docket. I wonder: Can we prosecute away the risks posed by impaired drivers?

Have you ever eaten cake decorated with the name of a prison facility? I hadn’t until a few weeks ago, when I attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Division of Adult Correction’s new CRV Center in Robeson County. I’m glad I made the trip down to Lumberton—not just because of the cake (which turned out to be pretty good), but also because of what I learned about DAC’s vision for its new form of confinement for probation violators. Today’s post is intended to pass some of that information along to the judges and prosecutors who will send probationers to the CRV centers, and to the defense lawyers who will advise their clients about what to expect there.

Last year, I wrote this post asking whether the probation tolling law in former G.S. 15A-1344(d) survived a 2009 statutory change. In State v. Sitosky, decided on the last day of 2014, the court of appeals held that it does not.

When a defendant is convicted of more than one offense at the same time, the court may consolidate the offenses for judgment. The sentence for that judgment is driven by the “most serious offense” among the consolidated convictions. G.S. 15A-1340.15(b). Today’s post considers some issues related to the determination of which offense in a consolidated judgment is the most serious.