North Carolina Criminal Law

Thousands of defendants are sentenced to unsupervised probation each year. They are often first offenders who have been convicted of not-so-serious crimes, so you don’t read much about them in […]

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A defendant’s prior North Carolina juvenile adjudications never count for sentencing points. That is true for felonies and misdemeanors alike. The definition of a “prior conviction” in Structured Sentencing (G.S. […]

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Today’s post is about a recurrent question related to jail credit for periods of confinement in response to violation (CRV). First, a 30-second refresher on the basics of CRV. When […]

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Author’s Note:  The opinion discussed below was withdrawn on February 4, 2014 and replaced by an opinion discussed here.   How can a sentencing factor found by a judge that […]

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The Justice Reinvestment Act made conditional discharge under G.S. 90-96(a) mandatory for eligible, consenting defendants. The law was amended last year to make it discretionary again for offenses committed on […]

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This morning’s New York Times included an opinion piece by Bill Keller entitled America on Probation. It talks about the recent movement away from incarceration as the cornerstone of the […]

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From 1995 to 2009, North Carolina had two sentencing grids—one for felonies, one for misdemeanors. That was it. Then the grid was amended in 2009. And 2011 (with special rules […]

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A DWI conviction will cost you. Let’s take the case of a typical defendant who has never before been charged with or convicted of DWI. I’ll call him Forrest Firsttimer. […]

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May community service fees be waived? I suspect some of you are thinking “I hope so, because they just were,” or something along those lines. It turns out to be […]

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North Carolina has a law allowing certain prison inmates to be released early for medical reasons. It was passed in 2008, largely in response to concerns that a small number […]

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