North Carolina Criminal Law

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 […]

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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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Extraordinary mitigation—or, more precisely, dispositional deviation for extraordinary mitigation—under G.S. 15A-1340.13(g) is a way for the court to impose a probationary sentence for a defendant whose offense class and prior […]

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The School of Government’s mobile app for Structured Sentencing is available for download. The version for Apple devices—iPhone and iPad—is in the iTunes App Store, linked here. (You’ll need at […]

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I was on spring break last week, which meant I had lots of time for uninterrupted reading while my kids entertained themselves at the pool. Okay, maybe not. Despite being […]

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Today’s post covers some of the nuts and bolts of electronic house arrest (EHA). EHA is fairly self-explanatory: in lieu of traditional incarceration, a person is confined to his or […]

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As I’ve noted in prior posts, some people just want to serve their time in prison. For one reason or another, they do not want to be on probation. For […]

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Thousands of defendants are sentenced to unsupervised probation each year. They are often first offenders who have been convicted of not-so-serious crimes, so you don’t read much about them in […]

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A defendant’s prior North Carolina juvenile adjudications never count for sentencing points. That is true for felonies and misdemeanors alike. The definition of a “prior conviction” in Structured Sentencing (G.S. […]

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From 1995 to 2009, North Carolina had two sentencing grids—one for felonies, one for misdemeanors. That was it. Then the grid was amended in 2009. And 2011 (with special rules […]

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