North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

My criminal justice students and I visited the British Library this morning to view an original Magna Carta (several originals were created by hand). I had considered taking them to Runnymede, the fabled meadow where the English barons forced King John to sign Magna Carta over 800 years ago in the year 1215. Apart from the time it would take to get there from London, I learned the British had repurposed the space to suit modern life. Runnymede is now considered an . . .

In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), the Supreme Court held that a sentencing regime that makes life without parole mandatory for a murder committed by a defendant under the age of 18 is unconstitutional. The rule applies retroactively. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. __, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016). North Carolina amended its statutes to comply with the ruling in 2012, enacting G.S. 15A-1340.19A through -1340.19D to create an option to sentence certain young defendants to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Today’s post considers where we are after a half-decade under the new regime.

If you find this blog useful and would like to get your CLE from the School of Government faculty and staff who post here, you’re in luck! This fall, we’ll […]

This week it was widely reported that federal investigators have issued subpoenas to the North Carolina State Board of Elections as well as to elections boards in 44 counties in the eastern part of the state requesting the production of millions of voter records.  The Associated Press says that the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina issued the subpoenas on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, suggesting that the underlying investigation concerns illegal voting by people who are not citizens.  The AP piece notes that two weeks ago the Eastern District U.S. Attorney announced charges against 19 foreign nationals arising from alleged illegal voting activities.  Keep reading for more news.

My wife and I arrived in London yesterday morning, where we will be spending the fall semester. In addition to serving as the faculty director for UNC’s honors study abroad program, I will be teaching an undergraduate course on criminal law and justice. Assuming I’ve done it right, below are pictures of the entrance to our home away from home for the next four months, UNC’s Winston House on Bedford Square in central London.

The court of appeals in State v. Mathis, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2018), decided yesterday, considered whether a licensed bail bondsman could be convicted of obtaining property by false pretenses and unlawfully accessing a government computer for submitting false monthly reports to the NC Department of Insurance that omitted some of the outstanding bonds he had issued. The court upheld one conviction but found the evidence insufficient to support the other. Hazard a guess as to which conviction met which fate. Then read on to see how the court ruled and why.

As WRAL reports, former Wake County Register of Deeds Laura Riddick pleaded guilty late last week to felony embezzlement charges arising from her years-long practice of diverting funds from the office for her personal use.  Under the terms of Riddick’s plea agreement, she repaid $926,615 that she had taken from the office and will serve a five to seven year prison sentence.  The WRAL report says that three other former employees of the deeds office have been charged in connection with the case.  Keep reading for more news.

As the Daily Tar Heel reports, this week a group of protesters on UNC campus used ropes to pull down the controversial Confederate monument known as Silent Sam; the protesters then covered the statue in dirt before it was removed by heavy equipment from McCorkle Place.  Chancellor Carol Folt explained in a statement that the monument “has been divisive for years” but criticized the “unlawful and dangerous” act of vandalism.  Time magazine published a story about the history of the statue that recounts decades of protests involving Silent Sam and includes excerpts of the speech delivered at the dedication of the statue in 1913 by Julian Carr.  Carr’s full remarks, including a personal anecdote where he boasted of violently assaulting a black woman within 100 yards of the site of the monument, are available here.  Keep reading for more news.

In 2010, I wrote a post asking, “Can a defendant be ordered to pay restitution based on offenses that did not result in a conviction?” The court of appeals answered that question this week in State v. Murphy.

This week a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report of an investigation into six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses which says that there is credible evidence that more than 300 “predator priests” sexually abused more than 1000 children over decades.  The report further alleges that the church orchestrated a sophisticated cover-up of the sex crimes.  The New York Times has an overview of the report here, and the full report, thorough and unflinching, is available here.  The statute of limitations has expired for the majority of the crimes detailed in the report.  Keep reading for more news.