Three Updates to DWI Sentencing since 2018

We are putting the final touches on the new edition of the North Carolina Sentencing Handbook - publication date forthcoming! As part of revising and updating the DWI Sentencing portion, three updates stood out to me as warranting some more discussion. First, the legislature has expanded delegated authority for probation officers to include probationers sentenced for impaired driving under G.S. 20-179. Second, the Court of Appeals further clarified the presumption for unsupervised probation and requirements for transferring a probationer from supervised to unsupervised probation. Third, a new mitigating factor was added for voluntary pretrial installation of an ignition interlock device. Read on for more details. 1. Delegated authority. Delegated authority permits a probation officer to impose additional, pre-defined conditions of probation on a probationer without judicial approval. When it was first introduced as part of Structured Sentencing in 1994, a probation officer only had delegated authority if a judge expressly authorized it during sentencing or a subsequent hearing. In 1997, the legislature gave probation officers delegated authority by default in all Structured Sentencing cases. This meant that unless a contrary finding was made during sentencing or a subsequent hearing, probation officers could impose additional conditions. The conditions are enumerated in G.S. 15A-1343.2. There are two sets of conditions: G.S. 15A-1343.2(e) lists seven conditions that may be imposed in cases where the defendant is sentenced to community punishment, and G.S. 15A-1343.2(f) lists eight conditions that may be imposed in cases where the defendant is sentenced to intermediate punishment. Until 2023, delegated authority [...]