North Carolina Criminal Law

Editor’s note: Tom Tynan is an alumnus of Duke University Law School, a recent federal judicial clerk, and a soon-to-be associate at a large law firm. He spent several months […]

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A while ago, Alyson Grine and I wrote a post about consecutive sentences for misdemeanors. In it, we discussed the rule that when a court elects to impose consecutive sentences […]

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Editor’s note: This post has been revised slightly in response to a helpful comment from a reader. A district court session usually lasts one day, so many court actors have […]

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The last round of opinions from the court of appeals included three related to satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders. None of them broke any major new ground, but two […]

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For the first time since 1995 we have a new felony punishment chart for Structured Sentencing. Two pieces of legislation from the past session, S.L. 2009-555 and S.L. 2009-556, made […]

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I first encountered North Carolina’s impaired driving sentencing scheme several years ago when I worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina.  I represented […]

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Under G.S. 15A-1343(c1), defendants placed on supervised probation must pay a monthly supervision fee of $30, unless exempted by the court. That exemption may only be granted for good cause […]

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The New York Times published this editorial last week advocating that all people convicted of impaired driving – including first-time offenders – be required to install ignition interlocks in their […]

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Suppose a defendant is convicted of a crime and the judge wants to (or, in a “C” or “C/I” cell in the sentencing grid, has to) suspend the sentence. Can […]

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I’ll get to the topic of today’s post in just a moment, but first I wanted to note what I found to be a fascinating little tidbit about the Willingham […]

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