This week offered a nice mix of serious legal news and comic relief. Let’s start with the serious stuff. The News and Observer ran this story about declining juvenile crime rates. It states in part that “[w]hile overall violent crimes have declined by nearly 14 percent in the state since 2002, the number of teens under 16 charged with violent crimes has dropped by nearly 37 percent. And while overall property crime dropped 4.5 percent during that period, the arrests among teens under 16 is down about 40 percent. . . . Juvenile crime is down nationally, but in North Carolina the downward trend is more than double the national average. That has prompted some to call the state a model for dealing with juvenile delinquency and youth crime prevention.” The story credits better detention centers with a greater emphasis on treatment, and improved partnerships with community organizations for the improvement. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Alleyne v. United States, essentially agreeing to reconsider its ruling in Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 (2002), that facts that increase a defendant’s minimum sentence, unlike those that increase a defendant’s maximum possible sentence, need not be found by a jury. Harris, as I recall, was a North Carolina federal case, argued in the Supreme Court by Assistant Federal Public Defender Bill Ingram, who must be thinking that while he lost the battle, he may not have lost the war. Sentencing Law and Policy covers the issue here, while SCOTUSBlog has [...]
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