The North Carolina General Statutes require the senior resident superior court judge to, in consultation with the chief district court judge or judges, issue a local bail policy. G.S. 15A-535(a). But doing so is no easy matter given the many statutory rules and exceptions and areas for discretionary policy choices. Christopher Tyner and I have tried to facilitate that task, with a North Carolina Model Local Bail Policy. We first issued the Model Policy in the Spring and we just posted an updated version, incorporating the latest legislative changes to the state’s bail statutes. The Model Policy can be found here; it’s the first item under “Implement.” Read on for details. The Model is designed to serve as a template for judicial officials when revising local bail policies. It contains all of the statutory rules and exceptions and sets out areas for discretionary policy choices, detailing options in explanatory notes and providing alternative language to accommodate a range of policy decisions. Warning: It’s long. But that’s because it includes a host of appendices offering variations of tools, colloquies and other materials that can be used or discarded as appropriate depending on local policy choices. Explanatory notes and optional and alternative language add to the length of the Model. But since we’ve offered the document in Word format, you can delete extraneous material as you work through the Model. We’ve already worked with one jurisdiction to update its local bail policy using the Model as a “go by.” Based on that experience, [...]
Faculty Coordinators
