North Carolina Criminal Law

The blog was dormant yesterday in honor of Veterans Day. Belated thanks to those who have served. [Editor’s note: Including Jamie, who was a captain in the Air Force before […]

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In North Carolina we have a fair number of habitual and repeat offender punishment provisions—laws that increase a defendant’s punishment because of crimes he or she has committed in the […]

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Earlier this year National Public Radio ran a series on court costs entitled Guilty and Charged. The general point of the series was that “the costs of the criminal justice […]

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Sometimes a good defense to an alleged probation violation is not about the violation itself, but rather about the underlying conviction or sentence.

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As a parent, I try to be a consistent disciplinarian. I do my best to avoid empty warnings about the consequences of some action (or failure to act, as is […]

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Rabah Samara, the young man who took the wheel of the Cadillac after it crashed into and killed sports reporter Stephen Gates as he was changing a tire on I-40 in […]

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G.S. 90-96 sets out a conditional discharge option for certain drug offenses. A conditional discharge is different from a deferred prosecution. In a conditional discharge program, the defendant is convicted […]

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The fields of the Capital Area Soccer League were a sea of blue again last night.  Players of all ages shelved their regulation orange jerseys and wore blue—Laura Yost’s favorite […]

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My daughter is awfully fond of this expression (when applied to one of her brothers, of course). Turns out it also is apropos for this week’s court of appeals decision […]

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You know I love a chart. I’ve made sex offender charts, Justice Reinvestment charts, maximum sentence charts, and drug trafficking charts. You should see the charts I make for family […]

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