Alleging a Probation Violation

A probation violation need not be alleged with the technical precision of an indictment, but there are still some rules about the right way to prepare a probation violation report. By statute and as a matter of constitutional due process, a person must receive notice of an alleged violation of probation before a court may act on it. The statutes are fairly unspecific, saying only that any request to arrest a probationer for a violation must be accompanied by a “written statement signed by the probation officer that the probationer has violated specified conditions of his probation,” G.S. 15A-1345(a), and that “[t]he State must give the probationer notice of the hearing and its purpose, including a statement of the violations alleged,” G.S. 15A-1345(e). The constitutional underpinning of the statute is also somewhat vague. See Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 786 (1973) (“[T]he ‘minimum requirements of due process’ include . . . ‘written notice of the claimed violations.’”). So we can see that there must be notice. And that it must be written. And that it should identify the conditions allegedly violated (although we'll see in a moment even that turns out to be flexible). What’s not crystal clear—by statute or as a matter of due process—is what information must be included within those written violations. Is the bare statement that the probationer has violated a certain condition enough? Or must the violation report give some indication as to the factual basis of the allegation? Our appellate courts have analogized to [...]