The Administrative Office of the Courts has issued a new form, AOC-CR-415, through which a person can make a motion for relief from costs, fines, and other monetary obligations. The form also doubles as the order through which a judge can rule on the motion.
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Case Summaries: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (August 2020)
This post summarizes criminal law and related opinions decided during August 2020 by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Welcome Back, Tom Thornburg!
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of welcoming our new colleague Brittany Williams to the School of Government. Today, I have the honor of announcing another colleague’s return to the criminal law fold. After more than two decades of serving as an administrator at the School – most recently as the School’s Senior Associate Dean — Tom Thornburg has returned to traditional faculty work, where he will focus on magistrates and their needs in the area of criminal law and procedure. Tom will work closely with our colleague Dona Lewandowski, whose work focuses on magistrates’ civil responsibilities.
News Roundup
WLOS reports that Henderson County Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Hendrix died yesterday after being shot while responding to the scene of a car break-in where gunfire had been exchanged by the owner of the car and the person breaking into it. Early Thursday morning, deputies responded to the Mountain Home community in Hendersonville where a resident reported that someone was breaking into his car, where he kept a gun. They found Robert Ray Doss, Jr., in a nearby truck and made contact with him. After first appearing to cooperate with the deputies, Doss fired a shot that hit Hendrix. Other deputies at the scene then shot and killed Doss. Hendrix is a Marine veteran who has been with the department since 2012. Keep reading for more news.
Serving Time for an Unpaid Fine or Costs When Time Has Already Been Served
If a defendant has fully served a term of imprisonment, can he or she be further imprisoned for not paying a fine or costs?
News Roundup
Protests in Portland, Oregon, turned deadly over the weekend when a man was shot on the street following a clash between supporters of President Donald Trump and people demonstrating against racial disparities in policing. On Saturday, a group of Trump supporters drove vehicles in a caravan around Portland while flying flags and otherwise expressing their support for the president in the upcoming election. Though the caravan route was meant to bypass downtown Portland, where protests have been ongoing since the killing of George Floyd in late May, some participants departed from the route and drove downtown where conflict broke out. Late in the evening, a member of the caravan, Aaron “Jay” Danielson was fatally shot in the chest by a gunman who has not yet been identified. Keep reading for more on this story and other news.
Case Summaries – N.C. Court of Appeals (September 1, 2020)
This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on September 1, 2020.
Jail Credit for Functionally Consecutive Sentences
Suppose a defendant is being held on two charges, Charge A from County A and Charge B from County B. He was arrested for both at the same time and has been held on both for the same number of days. For whatever reason, Charge A is handled first (perhaps because County A has managed to resume pandemic court operations more quickly than County B), and let’s say it results in a sentence to time served. If Charge B ultimately results in a conviction, can the defendant receive jail credit for the days of pretrial confinement that were already applied to Charge A?
Militias in North Carolina
In May of this year I wrote a blog post about protesters and demonstrators carrying firearms at their events. In the months since that post, a variation of that conduct has begun happening more frequently: armed militias showing up at other groups’ events, either as supporters or as opponents. The recent events in Kenosha have brought renewed media attention to this issue, but incidents involving armed militias have occurred all across the country this summer (see a few examples here, here, here, and here).
Lately I’ve been asked if these types of private militias are legal in North Carolina, and if so, whether they are permitted to “deploy” to protests as participants or security? This post provides a summary of the relevant statutes and the criminal offenses that may apply.
News Roundup
Threads of the modern American experience that for months have been pulled with increasing tension came together as the fuse for an explosion of violence this week on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a teenager from Illinois armed with an assault rifle killed two people and wounded a third while acting as a vigilante property guard during protests arising from another officer-involved shooting of a black man. As it was with the officer-involved shooting, the protest shootings instantly were broadcast into the public sphere from the cellphone cameras of onlookers, and as it has been with so much of this turbulent summer, assessments of fault are sharply divided. Keep reading for more on this story and other news.