North Carolina Criminal Law

Suppose a defendant convicted of a felony has a slam dunk mitigating factor. Let’s say, for example, that he has been honorably discharged from the military, which is a statutory […]

Read post

Last week the court of appeals decided State v. Nolen, its first absconding “donut hole” case. Pardon the mixed metaphor, but here is the donut hole in a nutshell: The […]

Read post

The Justice Reinvestment Act became law in 2011. S.L. 2011-192. Even before its initial effective date it was amended in 2011 by a technical corrections act. S.L. 2011-412. It was […]

Read post

Drug trafficking offenses can lead to really long sentences, and not just because of the special minimums and maximums that apply to those crimes. Consider this example: My husband and […]

Read post

Author’s note: This post has been updated since its initial publication. The original version overlooked G.S. 15A-1340.11(7), a statute that is clearly relevant to the discussion. Do old (as in, […]

Read post

May a judge delegate to a probation officer the task of setting the amount of restitution owed to a victim? For several reasons, my standard answer to that recurring question […]

Read post

How specific does a probation violation report need to be about which condition the probationer allegedly violated? Until last week, I would have said “not very.” A new case from […]

Read post

It’s been over two years since I recorded my first video blog post. With the help of School of Government multimedia developer Jamar Jones, I prepared another one for today. […]

Read post

I read an article this morning from the Washington Post about how some inmates are using the online consumer review site Yelp to rate jails and prisons. It’s an interesting […]

Read post

In Jeff’s recent announcement of the new version of the ASSET smartphone app, he mentioned that we would release another app soon. I’m pleased to report that our second app, […]

Read post