April 15, 2010
I wrote about satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders ten times in 2009. The court of appeals’ recent decision in State v. Phillips gives me my first occasion to write […]
April 8, 2010
Under G.S. 14-7.6, when a defendant is sentenced as a habitual felon, his sentence “shall run consecutively with and shall commence at the expiration of any sentence being served” by […]
April 7, 2010
Can a defendant be ordered to pay restitution based on offenses that did not result in a conviction? Of course a defendant should not be ordered to pay restitution for […]
March 22, 2010
Article 1, section 10 of the Constitution—the Compacts Clause—authorizes two or more states to enter into agreements or compacts with one another, provided they have the consent of Congress. Dozens […]
March 11, 2010
A longstanding lament of the corrections community in North Carolina has been the lack of a residential substance abuse treatment center for female probationers and parolees. In other words, there […]
March 9, 2010
In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), the Supreme Court held that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who […]
March 5, 2010
Last month the court of appeals decided State v. Mauer, an animal cruelty case. The defendant, Barbara Mauer, was charged with misdemeanor cruelty to animals after Cumberland County animal control […]
February 1, 2010
The Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) is studying data related to the disposition of seventeen types of misdemeanor charges during the 2009 fiscal year to determine whether decriminalization of […]
January 21, 2010
I haven’t done any sort of official tally, but I think the most common sentencing error in North Carolina might be sentencing the defendant to an improper period of probation. […]
January 15, 2010
There have been several interesting criminal law new stories this week. I want to focus mainly on one with a local connection, but I’ll note briefly this New York Times […]