The felony and misdemeanor sentencing grids tell us who can get probation. Community Corrections has its own grid that determines how that probation will be carried out.
Sixth Circuit Holds that Chalking Vehicle Tires is a Fourth Amendment Search
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last week that city parking enforcement officers’ use of chalk to mark the tires of parked vehicles to track how long they have been parked is a Fourth Amendment search. And, on the facts before it, the court held that the city failed to show that the search was reasonable.
Overcriminalization & Ordinance Violations as Crimes: A County-Level Breakdown
In a post here, I noted that under state law, counties, cities, towns, and metropolitan sewerage districts have authority to create crimes through local ordinances. This is a somewhat controversial issue. As I’ve noted, one of the arguments made in the national conversation about overcriminalization is that too many minor activities are made criminal and that it’s not efficient, effective, or fair to address this activity through the criminal justice system. It’s further asserted that many low-level crimes—such as panhandling and sleeping in public places—criminalize poverty and homelessness when those issues should be treated as social needs. In fact, at a panel discussion on overcriminalization at my recent NC Criminal Justice Summit, national and state experts from across the ideological spectrum weighed in on this issue, agreeing that creating a crime is a legislative function and should be done by state lawmakers, not local governments. Those panelists included Vikrant Reddy, Senior Fellow, Charles Koch Institute; Nathan Pysno, Director of Economic Crime and Procedural Justice, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Tarrah Callahan, Executive Director, Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform; and Mary Pollard, Executive Director, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services and President, North Carolina Advocates for Justice. The 240 state leaders and stakeholders who attended the Summit echoed that sentiment. During live, anonymous polling during the session, attendees weighed in on three consensus reform proposals formulated by the panelists to address overcriminalization in North Carolina. One of those proposals was: Repeal code provision allowing local governments and administrative boards and bodies to create crimes. 75.72% of attendees supported that proposal, with 26.59% supporting it with caveats; 19.65% opposed it; and 4.62% were undecided.
News Roundup
Late last week U.S. Attorney General William Barr publicly released a redacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The full report is more than 400 pages long and is divided into two volumes. Keep reading for further discussion of the report and for more news.
Federal-State Sentence Interaction: Concurrent and Consecutive Sentences
When a defendant is sentenced for both state and federal crimes, things can get complicated. There are a few traps for the unwary, even when everyone (prosecutor, defendant, and judge) agrees on how the sentences will be served relative to one another.
Revoking Licenses for Failure to Pay: Is Change on the Horizon?
The revocation of driver’s licenses for unpaid court costs and fines has been a hot topic of late. Much of the focus has centered around the spiral of debt that can result when an indigent person’s license is revoked for this reason. The narrative goes like this: The person is convicted of a relatively minor violation of the motor vehicle laws. Court costs and a fine are imposed. The person, who is financially unable to do so, fails to pay those amounts. Forty days after the judgment, the clerk of court reports the failure to pay to DMV. DMV mails a revocation order to the person, which becomes effective 60 days later. The person could forestall or end the revocation by paying the amounts owed, but she lacks the funds to do that. Yet she must drive in order to keep her job. So, notwithstanding the revocation, she continues to drive. Soon, she is charged with driving while license revoked and is convicted. Court costs are imposed again. And again, she lacks the funds to pay. DMV issues another revocation. When this cycle repeats itself over time, the person may wind up owing hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars in court debt, which, again, she lacks the resources to pay.
Who Can Access a Delinquency or Undisciplined Juvenile Court Record?
I have had the pleasure of working here at the School of Government for eight months now. In that time I have gotten some interesting questions about North Carolina’s delinquency laws. Most often, those questions relate to the confidentiality of juvenile court records. When I first read the statute – G.S. 7B-3000 – I thought it was an open and shut case. Unless you are on the list of people allowed access without a court order, access can only be allowed pursuant to a court order. But then the questions started to come in. Who exactly is the juvenile’s attorney under this statute? Can any prosecutor access juvenile records any time? Can a federal court order disclosure of a North Carolina juvenile record? On what basis can courts order release of juvenile records? It turns out that it’s not open and shut at all. Here is what I have learned so far.
Big Data and Criminal Justice
The debate about the criminal justice system increasingly is driven by empirical studies. Phil Dixon wrote thoughtfully last week about a new analysis of 700,000 drug arrests conducted by UNC faculty members outside the School of Government. This article by a Georgia law professor is also attracting attention – it claims to be “the most substantial empirical analysis of misdemeanor case processing to date,” based on “multiple court-record datasets, covering several million cases across eight diverse jurisdictions.” Similarly, in the popular media, this Washington Post article analyzes a huge trove of data to determine the percentage of arrests in each county across the nation that are based on marijuana possession.
I could list many more examples, but the general point is one with which I suspect most readers will agree: that big data is revolutionizing the discussion of criminal justice. This transformation has been unfolding for decades. Drivers include the growth of law and economics and other law and social science approaches, which has fertilized the legal field with social science techniques, and the increasing availability of large datasets, which has made statistical analysis easier. This post offers a few thoughts about the costs and benefits of this new data-focused world.
News Roundup
This week federal prosecutors announced that they have charged 60 people, including 31 doctors, pharmacists, and medical professionals, with various offenses arising from an investigation into illegal opioid distribution and health care fraud. Last year the Justice Department formed the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force and dispatched experienced health care fraud attorneys to several federal districts across the country to build cases against “medical professionals [who] behave like drug dealers.” The charges were brought in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia. Additional arrests are expected to arise from the investigation.
The News Roundup comes a day early this week as the School is closed tomorrow for a holiday, we’ll be back to blogging on Monday. Keep reading for more news.