A UNC School of Government Blog
Editor’s note: Today’s post discusses a recent case about the unique-to-North-Carolina phenomenon of Prayer for Judgment Continued, or PJC. For a terrific earlier post about PJCs — it’s the single most popular post in the history of this blog — see Jamie Markham’s discussion, here. Like Jamie, I get a lot of questions about PJCs. … Read more
The other day I posted my thoughts about the “Jacob Wetterling” provision in G.S. 14-208.12A. While that provision raises what I think are the most difficult questions related to petitions to terminate sex offender registration, they are by no means the only questions. Here are some others (along with my best attempt to answer them, … Read more
Two statutes enacted as part of the Motor Vehicle Driver Protection Act of 2006, G.S. 20-38.6 and 20-38.7, significantly altered district court procedures for implied consent offenses committed on or after December 1, 2006. G.S. 20-38.6(a) requires that motions to suppress evidence or dismiss charges in such cases be made pre-trial, except for motions to … Read more
by School of Government faculty members Jamie Markham and Shea Denning The folks at DOC combined records tell us they see a lot of habitual impaired driving judgments that look like this: 15 – 18 months, suspended, with an intermediate condition of special probation (i.e., a split sentence) requiring an active term of 12 months … Read more
Although I have a couple of more scholarly posts ready to go, there have been enough intriguing news stories over the past several days that I couldn’t resist doing another news roundup. First, returning to a topic I blogged about here, a Texas inmate has just been convicted of having a cell phone in prison … Read more
Several developments this week week have brought North Carolina much closer to resuming executions. The last execution in the state took place in August 2006. Since then, we’ve had a de facto moratorium, because of three related pieces of litigation. First, defense lawyers argued that lethal injection was a cruel and unusual method of execution. … Read more
Under G.S. 14-208.12A, registered sex offenders who are not required to register for life can petition the superior court to terminate the registration requirement after 10 years. (The requirement to petition for deregistration came into being in 2006; before then, 10-year registrations terminated automatically after the requisite time had passed.) North Carolina’s sex offender registry … Read more
Most readers of this blog know (1) that a search done pursuant to consent doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment, but (2) that the scope of search is limited by the terms of the consent. Thus, if Ollie Officer asks Sam Suspect whether he can search Sam’s house for the body of Vickie Victim, and Sam … Read more
Several stories of interest to readers of this blog have appeared over the last several days. First, the Winston-Salem Journal, in an editorial available here, is asking the General Assembly to take a close look at the death penalty, and to impose a moratorium while it does so. Of course, as the editorial notes, we … Read more
An interesting article in the New York Times, available here, talks about the increasing use of GPS tracking in domestic violence cases, either as a condition of pretrial release or as part of a probationary sentence. The story indicates that twelve states have passed legislation designed to enable the use of GPS in such cases. … Read more