A UNC School of Government Blog
I first encountered North Carolina’s impaired driving sentencing scheme several years ago when I worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina. I represented defendants charged under the Assimilative Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 13, with committing violations of assimilated state offenses on a certain federal enclave in Fayetteville. … Read more
By special request, this post recaps the law of nonstatutory aggravating factors. Under G.S. 15A-1340.16(d), the State may, in addition to the 25 statutory aggravating factors set out in that subsection, attempt to prove “any other aggravating factor reasonably related to the purposes of sentencing.” There’s no universal agreement on the “purposes of sentencing,” but … Read more
An article in last Saturday’s paper talked about Governor Perdue’s proposed changes to the probation system. Part of her plan would give probation officers access to probationers’ juvenile records, which reminded me of a related issue I have been meaning to write about: using juvenile adjudications as an aggravating factor at sentencing. Under G.S. 15A-1340.16(d)(18a), … Read more