Serving Time for an Unpaid Fine or Costs When Time Has Already Been Served

If a defendant has fully served a term of imprisonment, can he or she be further imprisoned for not paying a fine or costs? Under G.S. 15A-1362(c), when a defendant is ordered, other than as a condition of probation, to pay a fine, costs, or both, the court may impose at the same time a sentence to be served in the event that the fine is not paid. A different provision in G.S. 15A-1364(b) that says if a person defaults in the payment of fines or costs, and cannot show that the nonpayment was attributable to a good faith inability to pay, then the court may order the suspended sentence activated. The statute goes on to say that if the law provides no term of imprisonment or if no suspended sentence was imposed, the court may order the defendant imprisoned for a term not to exceed 30 days. That provision was primarily intended as an enforcement mechanism for defendants who received a fine-only sentence. If it feels a little like the punishment for contempt, that’s probably because the Fines article was enacted in 1977, contemporaneous with—actually, in the very same bill as—Chapter 5A, Contempt. S.L. 1977-711. But what about defendants who have already served an active sentence—either an active sentence imposed after sentencing, or an active sentence already served through application of pretrial jail credit? Can they, too, be punished—in a contempt-like way—by an additional term not to exceed 30 days for their failure to abide by the court’s assessment of [...]