Judge Spainhour Stepping Down as Sentencing Commission Chair

After nearly 18 years at the helm, Judge Erwin Spainhour is stepping down as chairman of the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. Today’s post takes a moment to recognize his service and the good work done by the Commission under his leadership. A superior court judge from District 19A (Cabarrus County), Judge Spainhour has served on the Sentencing Commission since 1998. For his first year on the Commission he was the representative of the Conference of Superior Court Judges. He was then appointed chairman in 1999. He was the body’s second chairman, succeeding Judge Tom Ross. Judge Spainhour began his tenure during the relative infancy of Structured Sentencing, which came into effect in 1994 and was reaching full swing by 1998. He helped assemble an expert staff that issues the statistical reports, recidivism reports, legislative reports, and correctional population projections that are all essential parts of staying true to Structured Sentencing’s guiding principles of consistency, truthfulness, and predictable resource allocation. The judge then led the Commission through what might be described as its adolescence: the response to Blakely v. Washington and the constitutional requirement that aggravating factors be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Justice O’Connor wrote in her Blakely dissent that the Court’s holding in the case would cause states to “trim or eliminate altogether their sentencing guidelines schemes . . . .” 542 U.S. 296, 314 (2004) (O’Connor, J., dissenting). “What I have feared most,” she wrote, “has now come to pass: Over 20 years [...]