Chief Justice Cheri Beasley entered three emergency orders on Saturday affecting court operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the orders impact criminal cases. One extends the deadline for filing notices of appeal. The other extends the authorization for remote proceedings in Emergency Directive 3 and renews and modifies the provisions of Emergency Directive 7, which provides additional time to pay monies owed in a criminal or infraction case. (The third order stays eviction actions that currently are pending in the trial courts until June 21, 2020 and imposes other requirements related to eviction proceedings.)
News Roundup
Carolina Public Press reports that last week three current and former employees of the Cherokee County Department of Social Services were indicted on a range of charges arising from an alleged “yearslong Cherokee County DSS practice that separated children from their parents without the oversight of a judge.” Former Cherokee DSS director Cindy Palmer (who now is the department’s business officer), former Child Protective Unit supervisor David Hughes, and the department’s former attorney, Scott Lindsay, were charged with various felonies and misdemeanors arising from the practice. Keep reading for more on this story and other news.
New Paper on Restitution
Today’s post shares a short paper on restitution that I recently prepared for the Conference of District Attorneys. I thought it might also be useful to other audiences.
Juvenile Justice Pandemic Lessons
The Juvenile Jurisdiction Advisory Committee (JJAC) met on May 15th. The meeting began with a presentation from William Lassiter, Deputy Secretary for Juvenile Justice. While the goal of the presentation was to provide data on trends since implementation of raise the age and the resulting resource needs, the presentation included information and data about juvenile justice system trends during this unprecedented pandemic. The data left me wondering—can changes in juvenile justice system utilization during the pandemic teach us lessons for the functioning of the system outside of a pandemic?
Case Summaries—Court of Appeals (5/19/2020)
This post summarizes opinions issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on May 19, 2020.
News Roundup
This week several North Carolina news outlets jointly reported that a nurse at Caswell Correctional Center, Barbara Anne Stewart, died earlier this month after testing positive for the coronavirus. Stewart, who fell ill in late March, had worked for the Department of Public Safety for more than 25 years according to the report. The North Carolina Department of Labor now is investigating her death, including examining whether any violations of health and safety standards contributed to her illness. Keep reading for more news.
Chief Justice Enters Additional Emergency Directives Governing Court Operations
This post was updated on May 22, 2020 to include discussion of a May 21, 2020 order extending deadlines in criminal cases and a May 14, 2020 order from the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Cheri Beasley entered an order today imposing eight new emergency directives (Directives 9 -16) to address court operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chief Justice entered a separate order extending time for documents to be filed and acts due to be done in criminal cases in the trial courts.
Another Case on Probation Hearings After Expiration
As the courts expand operations in the coming months, they’ll likely be holding probation violation hearings on cases where the probation period has already expired. A case decided by the Court of Appeals yesterday offers some insight into the type of findings needed to give a court jurisdiction to act.
Welcome Ian Mance, Resource Attorney on COVID-19 Issues
I am happy to announce that today is Ian Mance’s second day as a Resource Attorney with the Public Defense Education group at the School of Government. For the next six months, Ian will serve as an educational resource for attorneys representing indigent defendants and respondents regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the courts and criminal justice system. You can reach Ian, pictured below, at mance@sog.unc.edu. Please let us know the issues you believe need to be addressed.
DWI Update: May 2020 Edition
My colleagues and I usually spend the waning weeks of May slogging through months of appellate opinions, determining which cases merit discussion at upcoming summer conferences. This year, of course, there are no live summer conferences. Yet we are still slogging. We are delivering a virtual criminal case update for district court judges this week … Read more