news

Looking for some great beach reading? Look no further than the 2013 Punishment Chart for North Carolina Crimes and Motor Vehicle Offenses by Bob Farb! Available here, it is 129 pages of legal goodness. It contains information about statutory penalties for North Carolina crimes, including which offenses require sex offender registration. The Administrative Office of … Read more

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, the beginning of the end of WWII. Over 4,000 Allied soldiers died that day, and many more were injured. People have different ways of remembering the anniversary. My favorite commemoration is the one undertaken by 93-year-old Jim Martin, who did the same parachute drop into France … Read more

The focus in Raleigh this week was mostly on the budget. The Senate released its initial proposal, which differs from the Governor’s. As the News and Observer discusses here, the Senate budget would move the SBI and the Crime Lab from the Attorney General’s control to the Governor’s. Proponents of the move note that the … Read more

The legislature is in full swing. H 725, [update: fixed link] a bill that appears to raise the juvenile age to 17, but only for misdemeanors that are not motor vehicle offenses, has passed the House. Its prospects in the Senate are rumored to be uncertain. And H 1078, a bill that would eliminate special … Read more

Magistrates want mo’ problems. Actually, just mo’ money. By statute, magistrates are supposed to be paid according to a step system, with specific salaries attached to particular lengths of service as prescribed in G.S. 7A-171.1. For several years, though, magistrates have been “frozen” and not allowed to move to higher steps. Now a group of … Read more

This week, the state supreme court heard oral arguments on the retroactivity of Miller v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court case that ruled that juvenile murderers could not automatically be sentenced to life without parole. WUNC ran a short piece on the issue, consisting mainly of an interesting interview with an attorney from North … Read more

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling made some racist remarks to his girlfriend, she recorded them, and they were leaked on the internet. This appears likely to cost Sterling the ownership of his team, but he bought it for $12 million and will sell it for $1 billion, so he will be able to dry … Read more

Another North Carolina case is headed to the Supreme Court. The latest grant of certiorari is in Heien v. North Carolina, the burned-out brake light case in which the state supreme court ruled that an investigative stop may be based on an officer’s mistake of law, so long as the mistake is reasonable. The decision … Read more

I’ve been enjoying WRAL’s website lately. The News and Observer is putting more content behind a paywall, and WRAL has had a series of interesting criminal justice stories. The most recent is this one, an inside look at North Carolina’s Crime Victims Compensation Fund. Prosecutors, VWLAs, and law enforcement officers may be especially interested in … Read more

Unquestionably the most shocking story of the week comes from Wake County, where an assistant district attorney’s father was kidnapped, apparently at the behest of an inmate the prosecutor had helped put away for life. The father was held for five days while his family received death threats, but he was rescued in Atlanta and … Read more