A UNC School of Government Blog
There were so many significant and interesting stories this week, it’s hard to decide where to begin. But I’ve settled on this USA Today story about federal inmates serving sentences for possession of a firearm by a felon. The problem? The inmates aren’t really felons, at least not under current federal law. Here’s the short … Read more
Under G.S. 15A-1340.50, a judge may issue a permanent no contact order prohibiting a sex offender from coming into contact with the victim of his or her offense. According to the procedure set out in the statute, the prosecutor can, at the defendant’s sentencing for a reportable sex crime, request that the judge issue a … Read more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s new Crawford confrontation clause rule has had significant impact in child victim prosecutions, largely because of problems with getting children to testify. One frequent Crawford question that arises in these cases is: Are a child’s statements to a social worker testimonial? In a paper here, I explore the testimonial analysis and … Read more
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the United States Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for lawful purposes such as self-defense. Heller unleashed a tsunami of litigation over the nature and scope of that right. Of particular interest to criminal lawyers, Heller led … Read more
This weekend, the New York Times carried an article entitled Risky Rise of the Good Grade Pill. The piece concerns the abuse of certain prescription medications by high school and college students trying to stay awake to study, or trying to stay focused during exams. The most popular drug seems to be Adderall, which is … Read more
The General Assembly’s in session, and Republican legislators are moving to amend the Racial Justice Act. An AP article on point states that the proposal would “strip away much of the act,” but doesn’t delve into specifics. As far as I can tell, the current version of the bill under discussion is this one. Among … Read more
Several recent stories in the News and Observer (here, here, here, and here) have chronicled the SBI’s investigation into orders entered in certain impaired driving cases by former Wake County District Court Judge Kristin Ruth, who resigned last month. Newspaper reports characterize the orders at issue as purporting to alter the conviction date for impaired … Read more
Two recent cases—one from the North Carolina Court of Appeals and one from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—resolve questions of sentence administration that I’ve written about in the past. The first case is McDonald v. N.C. Department of Correction, __ N.C. App. __ (March 20, 2012), and it deals with … Read more
The court of appeals issued a new batch of opinions today. They’re available in full here, and Jessie just sent summaries out to the listserv. (If you haven’t joined the listserv for case summaries, you can do so here.) The thing that jumped out at me about today’s cases was that the court found several … Read more
In a blog post here, I wrote about overstating possible punishment and the voluntary nature of a plea. In that post, I discussed the dangers of overstating the possible maximum sentence with respect to consecutive sentences and recent changes to post-release supervision. That post prompted questions about a related issue. Here’s the set up: At … Read more