North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

As I’ve noted in prior posts, some people just want to serve their time in prison. For one reason or another, they do not want to be on probation. For […]

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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Author’s Note:  The opinion discussed below was withdrawn on February 4, 2014 and replaced by an opinion discussed here.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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