The North Carolina First Step Act

A new law provides a limited possibility of sentencing and post-conviction relief for certain defendants convicted of drug trafficking. The law, S.L. 2020-47, is called the North Carolina First Step Act. I wrote about it earlier in the year, here, when it was still under consideration in the General Assembly. At that point we were already getting questions about how North Carolina’s proposed law related to an existing federal law of the same name. (There’s no real connection between the two.) North Carolina’s enacted law is similar to the version I described back in January. It amends the drug trafficking sentencing provisions in G.S. 90-95(h) by adding new G.S. 90-95(h)(5a). That new subdivision says the judge sentencing a defendant for drug trafficking or conspiracy to commit drug trafficking (which is sentenced the same as drug trafficking itself) may depart from the otherwise mandatory sentencing rules for trafficking if he or she makes a finding that the defendant meets 11 conditions. Among those conditions are two threshold requirements that substantially limit the law’s applicability. First, the law applies only to defendants being sentenced solely for trafficking or conspiracy to traffic by possession; trafficking by manufacture, delivery, and transport are not eligible. Second, the trafficking must be for possession of an amount within the lowest category of trafficking for the particular controlled substance in question. So, less than 50 pounds of marijuana, less than 200 grams of cocaine, etc. Several of the other conditions are directed at the defendant’s criminal history. He or [...]