The legislature is in full swing. H 725, [update: fixed link] a bill that appears to raise the juvenile age to 17, but only for misdemeanors that are not motor vehicle offenses, has passed the House. Its prospects in the Senate are rumored to be uncertain. And H 1078, a bill that would eliminate special superior court judgeships as each judge’s current term expires, has been introduced. (Recall that last session saw an effort to abolish the judgeships in one fell swoop, leading my colleague Michael Crowell to post this analysis of the legislature’s authority, or lack thereof, to abolish the jobs of sitting judges.) There are other bills of note in the mix and we will keep you posted about significant developments. In other news: Debtor’s prison. Several readers pointed me to this interesting series of stories by NPR, about the nation-wide rise in courts fees and costs; the disparate impact those fees have on poor defendants; and the frequency with which defendants are effectively imprisoned due to an inability to pay the fees. Costs and fees have certainly been rising in North Carolina, and the issue deserves more detailed attention, perhaps in a future post. The times, they are a changin’. The top selling game on iTunes is Weed Firm, a game about building a marijuana empire, while pundits are pondering whether products liability plaintiffs’ lawyers will have the marijuana industry for lunch. (Best line: “If you think trial lawyers made a windfall on tobacco, just wait until they [...]
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