North Carolina Criminal Law

A defendant is sentenced to 10–21 months for a Class H felony. How much time will he or she actually serve? What about a Class D felon sentenced to 59–83 […]

Read post

A North Carolina defendant has a common law right to be personally present when a criminal sentence is pronounced. That right is separate from the constitutional right to be present […]

Read post

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 […]

Read post

Some inmates are serving long sentences for older crimes that would receive a much shorter sentence under today’s law. It is clear at this point that they cannot have today’s […]

Read post

North Carolina’s first attempt at a presumptive sentencing law was the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA). The law was in effect for offenses committed from July 1, 1981 to September 30, […]

Read post

Most people can get behind the idea that inmates should, if able, do some sort of work during their incarceration. By statute, “[i]t is declared to be the public policy […]

Read post

Before Structured Sentencing we had Fair Sentencing. Under Fair Sentencing, there was no such thing as “prior record level,” but a prior conviction could qualify as an aggravating factor, exposing […]

Read post

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 […]

Read post

It’s time to post an updated sex offender registration and monitoring flow chart. The new chart is available here. It incorporates the following issues, which were resolved by recent appellate […]

Read post

A recent case from the Supreme Court of North Carolina appears to have relaxed the limits on the use of hearsay at a probation violation hearing. The case also sheds […]

Read post