In the 2015 legislative session, the General Assembly made two significant changes to the pretrial release statutes: (1) it effectively repealed a "bond doubling" provision for defendants rearrested while on pretrial release, and (2) it expanded the scope of the 48-hour rule for domestic violence cases to include dating couples.Bond doubling. In 2013, the General Assembly enacted G.S. 15A-534(d3), which provided: "When conditions of pretrial release are being determined for a defendant who is charged with an offense and the defendant is currently on pretrial release for a prior offense, the judicial official shall require the execution of a secured appearance bond in an amount at least double the amount of the most recent previous secured or unsecured bond for the charges or, if no bond has yet been required for the charges, in the amount of at least one thousand dollars." S.L. 2013-298. As discussed in detail in this prior post, the provision proved difficult for magistrates to apply (because it is not easy to determine what a defendant's most recent bond is when the clerk's office is closed) and created problems when a defendant was released under a high bond for a serious offense, then was rearrested for a minor offense (with the statute mandating double the original high bond for the minor charge). This session, the legislature effectively reversed course. S.L. 2015-247 amended the provision so that a judicial official "may," rather than "shall," double the defendant's bond. (A judicial official always had the option of imposing a [...]
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