North Carolina

Prisons and jails across the Southeast have experienced utility outages, evacuations, visitation disruptions, and staff shortages in the storm’s wake.

Six people on North Carolina’s death row have been found innocent since I’ve been here.

Death row prisoners rarely get last meals, writes Lyle May, who is on death row in North Carolina. But on the night of an execution, the prison staff break room is full of cookies and cake.

As cities look to make new investments in non-police responses to gun violence, the Bull City United program in Durham, North Carolina, shows the importance of stable funding and sustained commitment.

Patrice Andrews once promised she’d never work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But in 2018, she directly ordered the arrest of immigration activists during an ICE deportation.

Even with the recent creation of the Juvenile Sentence Review Board, the governor’s process for granting clemency remains unclear.

In North Carolina, Attorney General Josh Stein’s Republican opponent painted him as soft on crime. Voters re-elected him anyway.

Shifting control of the states’ highest courts next month will prove critical on a number of major issues, including redistricting in 2021.

No Evil Foods created products like El Zapatista and Comrade Cluck, but workers say its conduct doesn’t live up to its leftist branding.

Rann Bar-On pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault of Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson to remain a legal U.S. resident. For the next two years, he isn’t allowed to protest in the county.

A report from an advocacy group says that deaths in the state’s jails have soared— and that 2019 could set a record for suicides.

Two years ago, the state passed ‘raise the age’ legislation that goes into effect in December. A judge’s decision regarding a teen charged in 2015 raises the possibility of relief for other young people charged since the law’s passage.

The Charlotte Observer built a narrative on gun crime that relies almost exclusively on police and prosecutors, ignores the violence of incarceration, and offers zero non-carceral solutions.

A statewide pattern of discrimination in jury selection has gone largely uncorrected, while lives remain in the balance, advocates say.

Recent legal victories have spurred counties and states to provide medication-assisted treatment to prisoners struggling with substance use.

Last week, in a 4-3 vote on the 2019-20 budget, the City Council in Durham, North Carolina, voted against funding 18 new police officers. It voted instead to raise the wage for part-time city workers to just over $15 an hour. With that, the city joined jurisdictions around the country that are critically evaluating requests for increased […]

A civil rights lawsuit claims officers pepper sprayed him, stripped him naked, and then surrounded him and beat him to death.

In September, Marcus Smith experienced a mental health crisis and begged Greensboro, North Carolina police for help. Instead, they tied him with restraints. Moments later, his body went lifeless.

Advocates say that Sheriff Donnie Harrison is unfit for a fifth term because of such abusive practices as well as his office’s cooperation with ICE.

A single training document uncovered in a prosecutor’s files could save Russell William Tucker’s life.

Public defenders in Charlotte say restrictions on communication hinder their ability to help jailed clients.

Mecklenburg, North Carolina District Attorney R. Andrew Murray doesn’t seem to understand the problem with the county’s deferred prosecutions system, even after a group of faith leaders held a press conference Monday morning, arguing that the current system discriminates against the poor most in need of help. The protest was timed with a hearing in the case of Charlotte […]

A local solution to a national problem.

On August 15, Victor Alonzo King of Raleigh, North Carolina was arrested and accused of child abuse. His offense? Allegedly leaving his five children under the age of eight unattended while he went to work. King’s employer says he left the children with a neighbor, who then left them alone, according to ABC 13. In court on […]

Two elected district attorneys in North Carolina have been arrested and one has pleaded guilty for a scheme that authorities said involved both men hiring the other’s wife for bogus jobs. Craig Blitzer and Wallace Bradsher were both accused of taking about $100,000 in state money from the North Carolina payroll program for jobs that didn’t really […]

Defense lawyers are asking a judge in North Carolina to hold Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell in contempt over allegations that he has failed to release files relevant to the investigation and prosecution of Mark Carver. Carver was convicted of strangling University of North Carolina student Irina Yarmolenko in 2011 and sentenced to life without parole. […]

On Monday, July 3, 2017, a Superior Court judge granted Mark Carver’s request for an evidentiary hearing, which will be held in September. Carver claims he was wrongly convicted of the 2008 death of Irina Yarmolenko, a UNC Charlotte student. As previously discussed here, Carver’s attorney, Chris Mumma of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, has alleged […]

It was the crime that caused the greatest basketball player in history to become a minor league baseball player who couldn’t hit a curve ball. And 20 years later, doubt has emerged over whether the man convicted of killing Michael Jordan’s father is actually the one who pulled the trigger.