North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

In North Carolina we have a fair number of habitual and repeat offender punishment provisions—laws that increase a defendant’s punishment because of crimes he or she has committed in the past. Today’s post considers how the prior convictions needed to establish those enhancements factor into the defendant’s prior conviction level.

Last month, the court of appeals decided State v. Hogan, __ N.C. App. __, 758 S.E.2d 465 (2014), a case about the use of a defendant’s prior convictions from New […]

I recently finished an Administration of Justice Bulletin about the habitual felon, violent habitual felon, and habitual breaking and entering laws. It’s a substantial expansion and revision of a paper […]

The General Assembly has passed H 937, which awaits the Governor’s signature. It is an omnibus gun bill, following rather closely on the heels of the omnibus firearms bill enacted […]

When a defendant pleads guilty, the judge is required to “inform[] him of the maximum possible sentence” associated with his offense. G.S. 15A-1022(a)(6). When a defendant pleads guilty to being […]

This post discusses what may be the single most common error in habitual felon proceedings: having a defendant stipulate, rather than plead guilty, to being a habitual felon. Must plead […]

I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the Garden State, but it seems like there are a lot of people here in North Carolina with criminal records from New Jersey. […]

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 […]

I wrote recently about how the Justice Reinvestment Act changes North Carolina’s existing habitual felon law (you can read that post here). This post examines a new recidivist offender statute […]

As part of the Justice Reinvestment project, analysts from the Council of State Governments (CSG) looked at how the habitual felon law is used in North Carolina. In general, the […]