A UNC School of Government Blog
Today’s post picks up where my last post left off, with answers (my answers, at least) to more frequently asked questions about post-release supervision. What will life on PRS be like? It will be a lot like probation—which is something to keep in mind if the defendant requested an active sentence to avoid probation. The … Read more
[Author’s note: State v. Townsend was withdrawn and replaced by a subsequent opinion, available here. The portion of the opinion discussed below was unchanged by the subsequent opinion.] No one gets relief any more under State v. Knoll—at least not from the court of appeals. State v. Townsend, decided today, is the latest in a series … Read more
According to the New York Times, the governor of Missouri is now deploying the National Guard in an “effort[] to quell unrest” resulting from a white police officer’s shooting of a black teenager in the city of Ferguson. It seems to me that much of the “unrest” is a result of a lack of factual … Read more
This week brought two tidbits of legislative news as the session winds down. First, the General Assembly slightly revised the rules for disposing of weapons seized during criminal investigations, generally making it somewhat easier to order such weapons into the possession of a local law enforcement agency. A helpful AOC memo explaining the changes is … Read more
In July John Martin, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, announced his retirement effective August 1st. Given the timing of his decision, state law requires an election in November to fill the seat but no primary in advance to reduce the number of candidates. It appears that everyone who has ever aspired to … Read more
There are almost 7,000 people on post-release supervision in North Carolina today. That’s up from around 2,000 in 2011, before the law was changed to require post-release supervision for all felonies. As the PRS census increases, so do the questions. Today’s post addresses a few frequently asked questions about post-release supervision, presented from the defendant’s … Read more
The General Assembly just made it a whole lot easier to determine whether a defendant imprisoned for a misdemeanor DWI conviction will serve his or her sentence in jail or prison. Defendants sentenced to imprisonment for misdemeanor impaired driving on or after January 1, 2015 will spend that time in a local confinement facility—a jail—rather … Read more
A national, empirical study of defenses found that the defense of entrapment arose in just 0.08% of cases, usually “to little avail.” Stephen G. Valdes, Frequency and Success: An Empirical Study of Criminal Law Defenses, Federal Constitutional Evidentiary Claims, and Plea Negotiations, 153 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1709, 1716 (2005). But every now and again, … Read more
The headline news this week is that the General Assembly has agreed on a budget, and Governor McCrory has signed it. It is here. Among other provisions, it moves the SBI from the Attorney General’s office to DPS (section 17.1); requires much of the information in attorney fee applications to be made publicly available online … Read more
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are commonly known as the Bill of Rights and were ratified on December 15, 1791. It is remarkable how many of these amendments are still resilient today throughout the United States. Their individual freedoms against government interference include: the freedom of speech and religion and the right … Read more