A UNC School of Government Blog
Last Friday, after years of litigation and months of deliberation, the Supreme Court of North Carolina issued its decision in Jones v. Keller. The case resolves the question of what sentence reduction credits, if any, apply to a group of life-sentenced inmates who were sentenced at a time when G.S. 14-2 read that a “sentence … Read more
In 2009 the General Assembly ordered the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Department of Correction to study the feasibility of conducting presentence investigations on “all offenders convicted of felonies for which the sentencing judge has the option of intermediate or active punishments.” S.L. 2009-451, sec. 19.14. The study was completed earlier this year, … Read more
I recently finished a comprehensive update of my Sex Offender Registration and Monitoring Flow Chart. It’s available here. As before, it includes a list of all reportable crimes (with a key to the relevant effective date applicable to each) and a summary of the satellite-based monitoring (SBM) determination hearing process required when a person is … Read more
In the recently-completed legislative session, the General Assembly passed several new laws regarding sentencing, corrections, and similar subjects. Frequent blog contributor and School of Government faculty member Jamie Markham has just finished a summary of that legislation. His excellent summary is available, hot off the presses, here. Highlights include Jamie’s analysis of the DNA-collection law; … Read more
The court of appeals issued three opinions on Tuesday involving satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. In all three, offenders challenged trial court determinations that they had to enroll in SBM. As a threshold matter in each case the court of appeals considered whether the offender’s oral notice of appeal of the SBM determination was … Read more
I am sometimes asked if a conviction for which prayer for judgment has been continued (a PJC) can be expunged. It’s a sensible question, given—as I’ll discuss in a moment—that a PJC is treated like a conviction for most purposes in North Carolina. A person has virtually the same incentive to seek expungement of a … Read more
Back in March I wrote a post on restitution to government agencies, setting out the general rule in G.S. 15A-1340.37(c) that “[n]o government agency shall benefit by way of restitution except for particular damage or loss to it over and above normal operating costs . . . .” I mentioned in that post that I would write … Read more
The court of appeals issued its decision yesterday in a case called State v. Miller. It answers a question I get asked a lot: Can an active sentence be served in noncontinous periods? The answer: No, it can’t—at least not as a true active sentence. In Miller, the defendant received a 30-day suspended sentence in … Read more
Some crimes have their own sentencing regime—impaired driving, drug trafficking, and first-degree murder to name a few. There are also crimes that fall under Structured Sentencing but that also have additional punishment provisions built in. One such crime is concealment of merchandise in mercantile establishments, better known as shoplifting. Under G.S. 14-72.1(e), the punishment for … Read more
Jamie recently blogged here about ad hoc conditions of probation, i.e., conditions other than the statutory ones. Because I’m interested in criminal law and technology, I wanted to add a follow-up post about restrictions on computer or internet use as part of a criminal sentence. It’s a timely topic, both because of Jamie’s post and … Read more