How Do You Measure a Life? (March 26, 2009)
Jamie Markham
A life sentence has not always meant a person’s natural life in North Carolina—probably. Under G.S. 14-2 as it existed for offenses committed after April 8, 1974, but before July […]
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March 26, 2009
A life sentence has not always meant a person’s natural life in North Carolina—probably. Under G.S. 14-2 as it existed for offenses committed after April 8, 1974, but before July […]
READ POST "How Do You Measure a Life? (March 26, 2009)"March 24, 2009
G.S. 90-96 is one of the densest, most used, and most misunderstood statutes on the books. Let’s try to unpack it a little bit. There are two distinct subsections under […]
READ POST "G.S. 90-96 (March 24, 2009)"March 20, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "Banned from the County (March 20, 2009)"March 17, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "Juvenile Adjudications . . . Aggravating (March 17, 2009)"March 13, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "A Post Filled with Contempt (March 13, 2009)"March 3, 2009
The Pew Center on the States just released a new report entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections. It’s available here, and a couple of news stories […]
READ POST "New Report on Incarceration and Community Corrections (March 3, 2009)"February 23, 2009
It has become clear to me in my work with judges and lawyers around the state that use of prayer for judgment continued—a practice virtually unique to North Carolina, at […]
READ POST "Prayer for Judgment Continued (February 23, 2009)"February 17, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "Proposed Changes to Sentencing Laws (February 17, 2009)"February 9, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "Going off the Grid (February 9, 2009)"February 4, 2009
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 […]
READ POST "Consecutive Sentences, Not Put on Ice (February 4, 2009)"