North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

(Author's Note: This post was updated on July 22, 2022, to note that NC DMV reports all in-state convictions for drivers licensed in another state to the state of record.) If a North Carolina resident with a North Carolina driver’s license is convicted of a motor vehicle offense in Virginia, will the NC DMV learn of the conviction? Yes. If a Virginia resident with a Virginia driver’s license is convicted of a motor vehicle offense in North Carolina, will the Virginia DMV learn of the conviction? Yes. Keep reading to find out why.

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The revocation of driver’s licenses for unpaid court costs and fines has been a hot topic of late. Much of the focus has centered around the spiral of debt that can result when an indigent person’s license is revoked for this reason. The narrative goes like this:  The person is convicted of a relatively minor violation of the motor vehicle laws. Court costs and a fine are imposed. The person, who is financially unable to do so, fails to pay those amounts. Forty days after the judgment, the clerk of court reports the failure to pay to DMV.  DMV mails a revocation order to the person, which becomes effective 60 days later.  The person could forestall or end the revocation by paying the amounts owed, but she lacks the funds to do that. Yet she must drive in order to keep her job.  So, notwithstanding the revocation, she continues to drive. Soon, she is charged with driving while license revoked and is convicted.  Court costs are imposed again.  And again, she lacks the funds to pay. DMV issues another revocation. When this cycle repeats itself over time, the person may wind up owing hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars in court debt, which, again, she lacks the resources to pay.

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Legislation enacted by the General Assembly this session again makes it possible for persons convicted of habitual impaired driving to (eventually) have their driving privileges restored.

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When a person’s probation is revoked, his or her suspended sentence is generally activated in the same manner in which it was entered by the sentencing judge. But a lot […]

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The court of appeals’ decision last January in State v. McKenzie was big news in the DWI world. The state’s intermediate appellate court held the one-year disqualification of a defendant’s […]

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What is the basis for the indefinite license revocation reflected in the driving record entry below? A. A revocation under G.S. 20-24.1 for failure to appear for a motor vehicle […]

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Suppose a police officer patrolling a city street lawfully pulls over a car with out-of-state tags. When the officer asks the driver for his driver’s license, the driver tells the […]

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Several recent stories in the News and Observer (here, here, here, and here) have chronicled the SBI’s investigation into orders entered in certain impaired driving cases by former Wake County […]

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As part of its ongoing coverage of the John Edwards trial, The News and Observer reported today that Edwards’ lawyer cross-examined former Edwards aide Andrew Young by reading from pages […]

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When analysts from the Council of State Governments studied North Carolina’s sentencing laws and correctional system, one of their key findings was that revoked probationers account for a lot of […]

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