Sentencing

Banned from the County

The First Circuit recently upheld a district court’s imposition of a special condition of supervised release banning two convicted drug dealers from Suffolk County, Massachusetts (basically, Boston) during the entirety of their eight- and twelve-year periods of supervision (United States v. Garrasteguy). The case caught my eye for two reasons. First, that’s a long time … Read more

Juvenile Adjudications . . . Aggravating

An article in last Saturday’s paper talked about Governor Perdue’s proposed changes to the probation system. Part of her plan would give probation officers access to probationers’ juvenile records, which reminded me of a related issue I have been meaning to write about: using juvenile adjudications as an aggravating factor at sentencing. Under G.S. 15A-1340.16(d)(18a), … Read more

A Post Filled with Contempt

Over the past few months I’ve been getting some really interesting questions about contempt. Disclaimer: The real experts on our faculty when it comes to contempt are John Saxon, Michael Crowell, and Cheryl Howell—I’m just dabbling here. But there’s a connection to my field (sentencing), in that many of the questions I’m getting relate to … Read more

Proposed Changes to Sentencing Laws

With the growing prison population and the shrinking budget, there’s some talk of changes to North Carolina’s sentencing laws. An article in the paper last week made general reference to sentencing alternatives proposed by the Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. I thought people might be interested in knowing a little more about the specifics of … Read more

Going off the Grid

In addition to sentencing in the mitigated range of the Structured Sentencing grid, there are two ways defendants can receive more lenient punishment in North Carolina: extraordinary mitigation and substantial assistance. Each law applies only in certain circumstances, and sometimes there’s confusion between the two. Extraordinary mitigation—or, more precisely, Dispositional Deviation for Extraordinary Mitigation under … Read more

Consecutive Sentences, Not Put on Ice

A number of people have asked me whether the United States Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Oregon v. Ice (07-901) has any impact on North Carolina sentencing law. The short answer is, No. In Ice, the latest chapter in the Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), saga, a 5–4 majority of the Justices held … Read more

Sex Offenders, Online Identifiers, and the First Amendment

A federal judge in Utah recently invalidated the part of Utah’s sex offender registry that requires each registrant to provide his “[i]nternet identifiers and . . . addresses . . . [and] the name . . . of all websites on which the sex offender is registered.” Doe v. Shurtleff, 2008 WL 4427594 (D. Ut. Sept. 15, 2008) (quoting Utah Code Ann. § 77-27-21.5(12)(i) & (j)). This raises some questions about the constitutionality of North Carolina’s new requirement that sex offenders provide “[a]ny online identifier that the person uses or intends to use.” G.S. 14-208.7(b)(7) (eff. May 1, 2009). . .

Read more

For Whom the (ahem) Period of Probation Tolls

If you’ve been reading the paper, you know the Division of Community Corrections (Probation) has been under a microscope lately. Since the killings of UNC undergraduate Eve Carson and Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato in 2008, both allegedly committed by probationers, Probation has been taking a hard look at its policies and procedures. One change … Read more