North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Two changes in the law have led to a new phenomenon—the need for youth under the age of 18 to satisfy conditions of pretrial release while being confined in a juvenile detention facility. First, the Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act (JJRA) raised the age of juvenile court jurisdiction for offenses committed at ages 16 and 17 on or after December 1, 2019. The JJRA includes a broad mandatory transfer provision, requiring that many felony matters shift from juvenile to superior court jurisdiction. G.S. 7B-2200.5(a). When that happens, the rules of criminal procedure (including those governing pretrial release) apply rather than the rules for juvenile cases. Second, Part II of Session Law 2020-83 required that the few minors who continue to be processed as adults in the criminal system from the outset of their cases be held in juvenile detention instead of adult jails. The release of minors subject to criminal rather than juvenile jurisdiction is governed by the usual criminal process for setting and satisfying conditions for pretrial release. Those conditions sometimes require posting a bond. But juvenile detention facilities are not equipped to process bonds. So how does this work? This post will review the circumstances in which a youth confined in juvenile detention may need to post bond, the impediments to doing so, and potential ways to address those problems.

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On Tuesday, the city of Louisville announced a settlement agreement in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by police as they served a search warrant at her home in March.  The city agreed to pay Taylor’s family $12 million and to make changes to Louisville Metro Police policy and practice.  The police reforms include mandatory commanding officer review of all search warrants, mandatory EMS/paramedic presence for the execution of all search warrants, and measures to increase officer engagement with the community.  Keep reading or more on this story and other news.

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This post summarizes an opinion issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on September 15, 2020.

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This post summarizes criminal law and related opinions decided during August 2020 by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on September 1, 2020.

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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.

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How does elder abuse show up in your community? How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected how that abuse happens or how local professionals respond to it? A new opportunity to address these concerns is opening up September 9th.

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