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This post summarizes opinions issued by the Court of Appeals of North Carolina on May 5, 2020.

We’re pleased to announce that the 2019 Cumulative Supplement to North Carolina Crimes: A Guidebook on the Elements of Crime is now available for purchase. The book includes cases and legislation through December 31, 2019.

John Rubin, Phil Dixon and I will host Legal Updates from the Judicial College this Friday, May 8, 2020, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m.  We will discuss recent criminal law decisions by the appellate courts. Below are the details for joining this webinar.

Chief Justice Cheri Beasley entered an order on Friday, May 1, modifying and extending eight emergency directives previously issued on April 2 and April 16, 2020.  The Chief Justice’s April 2 order, in which noted that she fully expected to extend its directives for an additional 30-day period and that judicial system stakeholders should plan for the directives to last through May, presaged the current one. Emergency orders issued by the Chief Justice pursuant to G.S. 7A-39(b)(2) initially may endure for no more than thirty days, but may be extended for additional 30-day periods. Friday’s order was effective immediately and expires on May 30, 2020.

As before, three of the emergency directives are particularly significant in criminal cases.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Supreme Court decided on May 1, 2020.

As the Charlotte Observer reports, yesterday UNC Charlotte marked the one-year anniversary of the campus shooting that claimed the lives of two students on the last day of spring classes.  In a ceremony that was conducted virtually because of the coronavirus, yesterday morning campus police officers placed two wreaths in front of the Kennedy Building, the site of the tragedy, to honor the two students who were killed, Reed Parlier and Riley Howell.  Later, at 5:10pm, the Niner Nation streamed a live event with remarks from the chancellor and other members of the UNCC community.  Keep reading for more news.

Six years ago (almost to the day) the School released its first version of the Structured Sentencing smartphone app. A new web-based version is available today.

Ramos v. Louisiana, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last Monday and summarized here, holds that the Sixth Amendment impartial jury guarantee gives defendants a right to a unanimous jury verdict in state trials. The case is making waves for reasons tangential to the dispute between the parties: in a dizzyingly split opinion, the justices argue more over the meaning of stare decisis (the court’s obligation to follow its prior holdings) than whether defendants in state courts may be convicted by a less-than-unanimous jury. This aspect of the opinion has been widely discussed (see analysis here, here, here, and here), and foreshadows the justices’ likely battle over an upcoming reproductive rights case. Since the divergent perspectives on stare decisis have been covered elsewhere, I will consider another issue that split the justices: the legal relevance of the nonunanimous jury law’s Jim Crow origins.

First, a pop quiz

Did North Carolina ever allow non unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials? Read on for the answer.

Last month I blogged about the one type of delinquency hearing for which remote proceedings are expressly authorized in statute—hearings on continued custody. This blog analyzes the legal and practical considerations for holding other types of delinquency proceedings through the use of audio and video technology. It will provide an overview of the authority to hold other delinquency proceedings remotely, discuss special considerations related to delinquency proceedings, and address what it all means for first appearances, probable cause hearings, transfer hearings, adjudication hearings, and dispositional hearings.

Local jails are an important part of the state’s criminal justice system. Jails house, among others, individuals held pretrial, serving sentences, and held for federal and other authorities. In this report and in the accompanying spreadsheet (here), we provide information about North Carolina jail occupancy rates. Among other things, we find that:

• 40.6% of counties[1] exceeded in-county jail capacity for at least one month in 2019; and
• 56.3% of counties exceeded 90% of in-county jail capacity for at least one month in 2019.

Our report relies on information reported to state authorities. Specifically, the North Carolina Administrative Code requires the sheriff or the administrator of a regional jail to submit a monthly report to the Jail and Detention Section of DHHS’ Division of Health Service Regulation.[2] Police chiefs likewise are required to report monthly on the occupancy of municipal lockups.[3] According to DHHS, those required to report do not include a count of inmates housed in other counties; rather they count only individuals physically present in the facility.[4] A jail that is housing individuals for another county would include those persons in its count.[5] We obtained a compilation of reported data from DHSS and it serves as the basis for this report.