2021 Sentencing Commission Statistical Report Available
Today’s post takes a look at the latest Structured Sentencing Statistical Report from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission.
Case Summaries: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (June 2022)
This post summarizes published criminal decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during June 2022. Decisions that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous […]
Can the Police Shoot a Person Who Refuses to Drop a Knife?
According to the CDC, a “sharp instrument” was used in over 1,300 homicides in 2019. Knives are dangerous and police officers are justified in treating them as such. Under what […]
News Roundup
Over the past two weeks there have been several developments related to the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Till, who was Black, was 14 years old at […]
Does NC DMV Learn of Convictions in Other States?
(Author’s Note: This post was updated on July 22, 2022, to note that NC DMV reports all in-state convictions for drivers licensed in another state to the state of record.) […]
Evaluating Substantial Similarity of Prior Out-of-State Convictions after State v. Graham
State v. Graham, 2021-NCSC-125, 379 N.C. 75 (2021), sheds new light on what it means for an out-of-state prior conviction to be “substantially similar” to a North Carolina crime for […]
Homemade Guns
Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan, was shot and killed last week. News reports suggest that the man who killed him used a crude homemade gun. How are homemade […]
News Roundup
Once again, the leading news story of the week is a mass shooting. This one occurred on Monday during a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, a neighborhood […]
Habitualized Sex Crimes, Take Two
About seven years ago, I wrote this post about habitualized sex crimes. The issue I explored there was how to sentence a person convicted of a Class F through I […]
Case Summaries – N.C. Court of Appeals (July 5, 2022)
This post summarizes the published criminal opinion from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on July 5, 2022. This summary will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a […]