Latest posts in category Uncategorized on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

For the last day or so, the headlines have been dominated by the multiple murder at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Law enforcement arrested Dylan Roof, 21, in Shelby, North Carolina. Roof is white, while the nine victims were black. Race appears to have been part of Roof’s motive. WRAL has the story here.

The premises restrictions of G.S. 14-208.18 have been in the news again lately. Here in Chapel Hill, a registered sex offender charged with being unlawfully on the premises of the public library had the charge dismissed on constitutional grounds. Meanwhile, the Graham County Sheriff made national headlines went he sent a letter to every registrant in the county prohibiting them, under the 300-foot rule, from going to church. The constitutional issues raised by these scenarios are interesting, but my first reaction in both cases was this: That law doesn’t apply to all registered sex offenders!

The front page of my local newspaper today featured a story about the General Assembly’s vote to override the Governor’s veto of the legislation allowing magistrates to opt out of marriages. Attracting less attention in the public at large, but important to the readers of this blog, was the Governor’s signature of a bill changing the way that state supreme court justices are elected.

Is the death penalty dying? It’s a fair question given that the Republican-controlled Nebraska legislature just abolished the punishment over the governor’s veto (the New York Times has the story here), and that yesterday’s ABC News poll reveals a “new low” in national support for the death penalty (albeit only over a time horizon of 15 years). It’s also the question Time magazine asked in this recent feature story. Here’s a related question that I’ll pose to readers: Which will come to North Carolina first, marijuana legalization or the repeal of the death penalty?

It was a big news week, but I’ll start with the General Assembly. First off, it passed a law, S.L. 2015-31, that requires motor vehicles to have at least one “stop lamp,” or brake light, on each side of the rear of the vehicle. It thus effectively overruled State v. Heien, 214 N.C. App. 515 (2011), which held that G.S. 20-129(g) only requires one stop lamp.

The big news at the General Assembly this week was the introduction of the House budget bill. Recent projections of a budget surplus contributed to a proposal to spend about 6% more than last year, including millions more for the courts and a 2% raise for most state employees. The News and Observer reports here that the AOC is “very pleased” with the House budget. Of course, there’s a long way to go before the budget is final.

In an odd turn of events for the person known as the “champion of the falsely accused,” WRAL reports that Christine Mumma was accused herself this week by the North Carolina State Bar of violating the Rules of Professional Conduct. Mumma serves as executive director and legal counsel for the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. The allegations arise from Mumma’s work to free Joseph Sledge, who spent thirty-six years behind bars for the killing of a mother and her daughter in Bladen County in 1976 before he was exonerated last January.

I have been working on a theory of everything . . . for expunctions. It’s a small corner of the criminal justice universe, but a critical one for people with past convictions. The subject can be maddeningly complex, at times a seemingly impenetrable black hole. I have been trying to master the mysteries of our expunction statutes in updating my 2012 Guide to Relief from a Criminal Conviction (which you can find here, but beware of subsequent changes in the law).

Without further physics puns, here’s one of the questions I’ve looked at: Can a person expunge a misdemeanor conviction under G.S. 15A-145.5 for driving while impaired (DWI)? As the statute is currently worded, the answer is yes.

Come on, fellow citizens! Enough with the nudist exhibitionism in residential neighborhoods! According to this local story, a Salisbury man has been arrested and charged with indecent exposure after “sitting in the back yard totally naked . . . less than thirty feet from where [a neighbor’s] teen daughter was riding a horse.” We’ve had several somewhat similar incidents in the state recently, and regular readers may recall the controversy over whether nudity in one’s home or yard that is visible to others qualifies as indecent exposure. (I discussed that issue here.)

A big case was argued this week before the United States Supreme Court. You’ve probably been following it, right?