North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Some probationers are subject to a curfew—a time each day (usually in the evening or at night) when they are restricted to their residence. Recent changes to the law have […]

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was sentenced yesterday to 30 to 60 years in prison on 45 counts of sexually abusing boys. The New York Times has the […]

The Justice Reinvestment Act created a new early release program called Advanced Supervised Release (ASR). In short, the law allows certain prison inmates to get out of prison early if […]

Under the Justice Reinvestment Act, a probation officer may, through delegated authority, impose a short period of jail confinement in response to a violation of a court-imposed probation condition. The […]

North Carolina’s structured sentencing grid did not change from 1995 to 2009. Since then it has changed twice, once for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2009 (discussed here), […]

A frequently asked question of late is whether a judge may still impose special probation (a split sentence) in a probation case. Apparently the question arises out of a sense […]

Y’all may be tired of reading about sentencing in impaired driving cases, particularly if you’ve read this entire bulletin.  But I’m hoping the reader-market will bear a few more sentencing-related […]

In 2012, a person on supervised probation for an offense that occurred before December 1, 2011 moves to another state without permission. Months later he is arrested there and brought […]

Under G.S. 15A-1340.14(e), a defendant’s prior out-of-state convictions count by default as Class I felonies if the other jurisdiction classifies them as a felony, or as Class 3 misdemeanors if […]

A probation violation must be willful. In this prior post I wrote about the burden-shifting process in which the State must prove to the court’s reasonable satisfaction that a violation […]