Double-Secret Post-Release Supervision

Post-release supervision has been mandatory for all felonies since 2011. But rarely if ever does anyone mention it when advising a defendant about a waiver of counsel or the consequences of a guilty plea. It’s not clearly statutorily required to do so. But the PRS is real, especially for crimes that require registration as a sex offender, where the term of supervised release is five years. G.S. 15A-1368.2(c). Is it a problem that it doesn’t get mentioned? Yes, according to a recent case from the Court of Appeals. The case is State v. Spry, ___ N.C. App. ___, 911 S.E.2d 745 (2025). The facts of the case stem from a robbery that happened in 2006. The defendant ultimately pled guilty to common law robbery, second-degree kidnapping, and attempted second-degree kidnapping. The kidnappings involved victims under the age of 16, but the trial court didn’t note that on the original judgment in 2007. The Department of Correction sent an auditing letter asking for clarification, because a kidnapping of a minor requires sex offender registration. G.S. 14-208.6(1m). The trial court—without any notice to the defendant and outside his presence—modified the judgment, checking the box indicating that the victims were minors. The amended judgment triggered sex offender registration, which in turn triggered the requirement for a five-year term of post-release supervision. Under the law that existed at that time (pre-2011), there was no increased maximum term of imprisonment for Class B1–E sex offenders, just a requirement for a longer term of supervision in the community [...]