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Laura’s Law

In yesterday’s post, Jeff mentioned Laura’s Law, which increases the maximum punishment for impaired driving.  Today’s post discusses those provisions in more detail. S.L. 2011-191, dubbed Laura’s Law in recognition of 17-year-old Laura Fortenberry, who died last summer when the car she was riding in was struck by an impaired driver who had previous DWI … Read more

Table of Maximum Permissible Punishments

For a variety of reasons, it is sometimes helpful to know the maximum punishment applicable to a particular type of offense. For instance, when charging a defendant with possession of a firearm by a felon, the indictment should set forth the maximum penalty by which the defendant’s prior felony offense was punishable. For some defendants … Read more

A Refresher on Aggravating Factors in Structured Sentencing Cases

The Supreme Court of the United States decided Blakely v. Washington in 2004, holding that any fact (other than a prior conviction) that increases a defendant’s sentence beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt or admitted to by the defendant. 542 U.S. 296 (2004). Before Blakely—when it … Read more

The Justice Reinvestment Act: An Overview

The Governor signed the Justice Reinvestment Act (S.L. 2011-192 (H 642)) into law last week. It makes substantial changes to the law of sentencing and corrections in North Carolina—easily the most sweeping changes to Structured Sentencing since its passage in 1994. I’m working on a detailed bulletin on how our sentencing laws will operate after … Read more

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DWLR as a Grossly Aggravating Factor for DWI Sentencing

Grossly aggravating or just grossly confusing?  When is a DWI defendant driving while revoked for an impaired driving revocation? Several earlier posts (here , here and here) have discussed sentencing for the offense of impaired driving. The punishment for driving while impaired is based on the presence and weighing of statutorily defined aggravating and mitigating … Read more

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What Not to Do in an Impaired Driving Case (Post II)

The first post in this series discussed State v. Taylor. This one recounts the what not to do lessons from last week’s court of appeals’ decision in State v. Petty . The defendant in Petty was charged on April 28, 2006 with impaired driving. He moved to dismiss the charges pursuant to State v. Knoll, … Read more

How Do You Measure a Month?

In State v. Bowden, 193 N.C. App. 597 (2008), disc. rev. improvidently allowed, 363 N.C. 621 (2009), and Jones v. Keller, 364 N.C. 249 (2010), our appellate courts considered the sentence length and sentence credits applicable to a group of inmates with offense dates from the 1970s. They committed their crimes at a time when … Read more

Probation Tolling Repealed

I’ve mentioned the big legislative changes pending in HB 642 (the Justice Reinvestment Act, which was discussed in House Appropriations this morning), but I haven’t written about an important criminal bill that’s already been signed into law. It’s Session Law 2011-62 (HB 270), Amend Conditions of Probation, which the Governor signed on May 3. The … Read more