More on the New Pretrial Integrity Act

Last month, my colleague Jeanette Pitts blogged about the new Pretrial Integrity Act enacted under S.L. 2023-75 (H 813). Since the bill was passed, I have gotten a few questions about potential issues that might arise once it goes into effect on October 1. This post addresses some of those concerns. As a refresher, the law amends G.S. 15A-533(b) to expand the list of offenses for which only a judge may consider conditions of pretrial release. Previously, this provision applied only to first-degree murder cases; it now will apply to several other high-level felonies, such as kidnapping, rape, sexual offenses, and robbery. For these cases, the statute sets no time limit on when a judge must rule on pretrial release, although in-custody defendants are entitled to a first appearance before a judge within 72 hours after arrest, an issue I discuss at the end of this post. The law also enacts new G.S. 15A-533(h), limiting a magistrate’s authority to set conditions of release for a defendant who is arrested for a new offense while the defendant was on pretrial release for another pending proceeding. In these cases, only a judge may set conditions of release within the first 48 hours after arrest for the new offense. A magistrate may set conditions within the first 48 hours after arrest for the new offense for violations of Chapter 20 of the General Statutes, but the new 48-hour rule applies to offenses involving impaired driving, namely: impaired driving, G.S. 20-138.1; impaired driving in a [...]