Now that the North Carolina General Assembly has adjourned for the remainder of the year and most criminal law legislation has taken effect (which is often December 1 each year), it’s time to take stock of what passed this session. You can read summaries of all of the criminal law and related legislation here. Each summary provides a brief description of the act in question along with a link to the text of the act and, where available, links to blogs my colleagues and I wrote. As usual, the legislation spans a range of topics.
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News Roundup
With the short holiday week, the News Roundup comes a few days early. We hope our readers have a safe and happy holiday. We’ll be back to blogging on Monday. Keep reading for the latest in criminal law and Thanksgiving news.
Raise the Age Tips and Resources for Law Enforcement
North Carolina sits four days away from implementation of the most significant change to juvenile court jurisdiction since the inception of the juvenile delinquency system 100 years ago. Beginning on December 1, 2019, most offenses alleged to have been committed by 16- and 17-year-olds will begin under juvenile jurisdiction. G.S. 7B-1501(7)b, G.S. 7B-1604(b). This change will shift the procedures that law enforcement must follow when processing 16- and 17-year-olds for these now juvenile offenses from criminal procedures to juvenile procedures. The good news, as Jeff Ledford, Chief of Police in Shelby, N.C., put it—if an officer knows how to take a 13-year-old into custody today, that officer knows how to take a 16- or 17-year-old into custody on December 1st. This blog provides three key tips for law enforcement to follow and links to a short training video and job aid developed specifically for law enforcement training on raise the age.
News Roundup
The Asheville Citizen-Times reports that Joe Wiseman has reached a civil settlement with Buncombe County that requires him to pay the county $150,000 related to his participation in bribery and kickback schemes with former county officials. The settlement also requires Wiseman to provide testimony and otherwise cooperate in potential future prosecutions. The Citizen-Times additionally notes that Wiseman recently reported to federal prison to begin serving the sentence resulting from his guilty plea earlier this year. Keep reading for more news.
Case Summaries — N.C. Court of Appeals (11/19/2019)
This post summarizes opinions issued by the Court of Appeals of North Carolina on November 19, 2019. Trial court did not err in denying defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of the defendant’s purse when officer testified that the defendant voluntarily consented to the search, notwithstanding contradictory testimony from the defendant. State … Read more
“No True Bill” on a Superseding Indictment… Now What?
The defendant has been indicted for a felony, and is in custody awaiting trial. The prosecutor decides to submit a superseding indictment to the grand jury, alleging the same offense but expanding the date range and adding a second victim. Unfortunately for the state, the grand jury returns “no true bill” on the superseding indictment.
What impact does the grand jury’s verdict have on the underlying case? Can the state still proceed on the original indictment? Should the defendant be released? May the state submit another superseding indictment and try again? If so, is there a limit to how many times?
These questions crossed my desk recently, and I discovered that the case law interpreting the key North Carolina statutes, G.S. 15A-629 and 646, is pretty thin on these issues. I also learned that other jurisdictions have reached dramatically different answers to the same questions. This post looks at the reasoning behind the competing views, and considers which approach is a better fit under our statutes and cases.
County-Level Bail Conditions in North Carolina
I previously wrote (here) about the role of money bail in North Carolina and presented 2018 county-level data on the types of pretrial conditions imposed for misdemeanors. I got so many questions about that data that we have produced it in a more comprehensive and user friendly form. Our new downloadable Excel file (here) contains … Read more
News Roundup
As the L.A. Times reports, there was another school shooting in the United States this week. Early on Thursday morning just as classes were beginning, a student at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, opened fire with a handgun while standing in the school’s quad. Two students were killed and three others were wounded. The gunman, apparently a 16-year-old boy whose birthday was Thursday, shot himself but survived and was being treated at a hospital at the time of writing. Keep reading for more news.
BIG NEWS: S.L. 2019-245 Creates a New Universal Mandated Reporting Law for Child Victims of Crimes and Changes the Definition of “Caretaker”
[Editor’s note: Because the information in this post cuts across multiple subject areas, the post will appear on several School of Government blogs.]
An Act to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse and to Strengthen and Modernize Sexual Assault Laws, S.L. 2019-245 (S199) enacts and amends various laws related to crimes;* amends some civil and criminal statutes of limitations; requires mandatory training for school personnel addressing child sex abuse and trafficking; amends the definition of “caretaker” as it relates to child abuse, neglect, or dependency; and creates a new universal mandatory reporting law for child victims of certain crimes.
This post discusses
- the amendment to the definition of caretaker and
- the new mandatory reporting law, which requires any adult to make a report to law enforcement when a juvenile is a victim of certain crimes.
News Roundup
The major national criminal law news story of the week comes from Oklahoma where on Monday more than 400 inmates had their sentences commuted and were released from prison. It was the largest mass commutation in U.S. history. As USA Today explains, Oklahoma made changes to its criminal law in 2016 that lowered the classification of certain offenses from felonies to misdemeanors and correspondingly reduced the punishment for those offenses. Earlier this year, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a law that gave those changes retroactive effect, leading to Monday’s release. The USA Today piece says that the state expects to save $12 million by releasing the low-level offenders. Keep reading for more news.