Remember Those Timelines for Non-Capital Motions for Appropriate Relief?

They are gone. In a blog post here I wrote about 2012 North Carolina legislation imposing tight new timelines for judges handling post-conviction motions for appropriate relief. When I had to tell the judges about those new rules at last year’s judges’ conference, I was tempted to bring a riot shield. Folks were upset about the rules for a number of reasons. In jurisdictions with heavy caseloads and high volumes of post-conviction motions, judges reported difficulty complying with the new timelines. Also, the new rules didn’t account for common scenarios that might require action other than that specified in the statute, such as when a defendant files a pro se motion for appropriate that raises a colorable issue. In that scenario it may make sense for the trial judge to appoint counsel and have counsel file an amended motion before requiring the State to respond or holding a hearing. By handling the motion this way, all relevant issues are flagged on the front end and the case is handled more efficiently. Perhaps most significantly, the new rules effectively gave court date priority to post-conviction challenges by convicted defendants over just about every other matter before the trial court, including capital cases, serious felony trials, and complex civil cases with special 2.1 designation. Of course, the new timelines didn’t have a lot of teeth, G.S. 15A-1420(b2) (“failure to meet a deadline under this subsection is not a ground for the summary granting of a motion for appropriate relief or other summary relief, [...]