October 2, 2012
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 […]
September 25, 2012
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), […]
September 17, 2012
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 […]
September 11, 2012
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 […]
September 5, 2012
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 […]
August 29, 2012
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 […]
August 22, 2012
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 […]
August 15, 2012
I’ve heard folks say that there is criminal law . . . and then there is impaired driving law. What I think they mean is that while impaired driving is, […]
August 8, 2012
For the past few years, the Section of Community Corrections of the Division of Adult Correction has been transitioning to what they call "evidence-based practices," or EBP. The basic idea is to use series of assessment tools to identify which offenders are mostly likely to reoffend and most in need of programming, and then tailor their supervision accordingly. The process involves some terminology that is probably familiar by now to most probation officers, but may be less familiar to judges, lawyers, and defendants. Today’s post provides an overview of the process probation officers use to sort probationers into different supervision levels and an introduction into what those levels mean for probationers as a practical matter.
August 1, 2012
I mentioned in this prior post that the 2012 Justice Reinvestment clarifications act, S.L. 2012-188, made changes related to drug trafficking. Specifically, the law amended G.S. 15A-1368.1 to make clear that […]