Under a law that existed from late 1994 to late 1998, North Carolina defendants sentenced to life without parole for offenses committed during that window are entitled to a judicial review after 25 years of imprisonment. I wrote about it here a few years ago, noting that the window for reviews would open in late 2019. Here we are. The law in question is G.S. 15A-1380.5. You won’t find it in your current General Statute books because it has been repealed for over two decades. It came into effect for offenses committed on or after October 1, 1994, and it was repealed in 1998, S.L. 1998-212, Section 19.4(q), effective for offenses committed on or after December 1, 1998. There are over 200 inmates serving life without parole sentences that fall within that effective date window. The defendants with the earliest offense dates in the window are now or will soon be eligible for their first review. The judicial review should be conducted by a resident superior court judge for the county in which the defendant was convicted after he or she has served 25 years of the life sentence. The law made no exceptions for defendants who might have multiple life sentences or other consecutive sentences, and so it appears to me that those inmates would likewise be entitled to review on the first eligible sentence after 25 years. The potential upshot of the review is not resentencing or other relief granted by the judge (unless, of course, the review reveals [...]