Who Is a Minor in North Carolina?

Various criminal law provisions use the word “minor.” What is a minor? The question comes up in different contexts. Elements of certain crimes. Sex offender registration and satellite-based monitoring. Probation conditions that prohibit residing with a minor. Confusingly, the age of “majority” does not usually match up with the age of juvenile jurisdiction or the “age of consent” for various statutory sex crimes. The general definition of a minor in North Carolina comes from G.S. 48A-2: “A minor is any person who has not reached the age of 18 years.” In the absence of a more specific definition in a particular statutory context, that’s likely the rule—a person age 17 and under is a minor. Sometimes a criminal statute does have a specific definition of minor. For example, G.S. 14-190.13(3) defines “minor” for specified obscenity and sexual exploitation crimes as “[a]n individual who is less than 18 years old and is not married or judicially emancipated.” (My colleague Sara DePasquale wrote about judicial emancipation here.) Same for G.S. 14-43.10(4) (human trafficking, which also governs involuntary servitude, sexual servitude, and sale of a minor), G.S. 14-203(2) (prostitution), and G.S. 14-269.7(c)(2) (handgun prohibitions for minors). Some statutes use the word minor without further definition, but the context indicates they are actually referring to subclass of young people. For instance, G.S. 14-50.18 on soliciting a minor to participate in gang activity actually refers to the encouragement, solicitation, or coercion of persons under 16 years of age to participate in criminal gang activity. Subsection (c) [...]