North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

Suppose a defendant is being held on two charges, Charge A from County A and Charge B from County B. He was arrested for both at the same time and has been held on both for the same number of days. For whatever reason, Charge A is handled first (perhaps because County A has managed to resume pandemic court operations more quickly than County B), and let’s say it results in a sentence to time served. If Charge B ultimately results in a conviction, can the defendant receive jail credit for the days of pretrial confinement that were already applied to Charge A?

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Consecutive sentences can be madness. Today’s post will—I hope—give you a championship-caliber understanding of how they are administered.

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When a person has pretrial jail credit shared between multiple charges, and those charges result in consecutive sentences, the shared jail credit gets applied only once. Does it matter which individual sentence gets the credit?

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The rules limiting consecutive sentences for misdemeanors can be tricky. This post addresses some of the issues that come up from time to time.

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May the judge sentencing a conviction now order that it run consecutively to sentences the defendant might get in the future?

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I am asked from time to time whether imprisonment terms for special probation (split sentences) may be run consecutively. I think they probably may.

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When a defendant is convicted of more than one crime, there are decisions to be made about how the sentences for those convictions will fit together. Generally speaking, they may be consolidated for judgment, allowed to run concurrently, or set to run consecutively. If at least one of those judgments suspends a sentence and places the defendant on probation, the judge has an additional decision to make regarding when probation begins.

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Today’s post explains the “single sentence rule” of G.S. 15A-1354(b), the law that tells the prison system how to administer consecutive felony sentences. Knowing the rule is essential to figuring out […]

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