Habitual Breaking and Entering

I wrote recently about how the Justice Reinvestment Act changes North Carolina’s existing habitual felon law (you can read that post here). This post examines a new recidivist offender statute created by the act: the status offense of habitual breaking and entering. Under the new law, set out in G.S. 14-7.25 through -7.31, a person can be charged, convicted, and sentenced as a habitual breaking and entering status offender upon his or her second conviction of “breaking and entering.” “Breaking and entering” is defined in new G.S. 14-7.25 to include the following felonies: First degree burglary (G.S. 14‑51); Second degree burglary (G.S. 14‑51); Breaking out of dwelling house burglary (G.S. 14‑53); Breaking or entering buildings generally (G.S. 14‑54(a)); Breaking or entering a building that is a place of religious worship (G.S. 14‑54.1); Any repealed or superseded offense substantially equivalent to any of the offenses listed above; Any offense committed in another jurisdiction substantially similar to any of the offenses above. The habitual B & E status offense is similar operationally to the habitual felon law. Like being a habitual felon, it is a status, not a crime—a person cannot be prosecuted simply for having a prior covered felony. There must be a conviction for a new principal felony, to which the status offender sentencing provisions then attach. The key differences between the new habitual B & E status offense and the existing habitual felon law are that that the former applies to a much smaller universe of qualifying offenses (those listed above, as opposed to all [...]