Author: milesr613

Today was the final day of our WEP but definitely the best day yet. Travis, Gabriella, and I got the opportunity to visit the General Assembly to sit in on a Senate Judiciary meeting and meet with Ms. Jennifer Bedford from legislative analysis. Unfortunately, they didn’t end up discussing SB300 (the bill we’d been researching for the past week); however, at the last minute they added a highly contentious abortion related bill that made the meeting much more interesting, and last a significantly longer time.

After the Senate meeting, we got to sit down  and talk with Ms. Bedford, who told us all about her work as an impartial essentially know it all at the general assembly. DUring the senate meeting, she would continually be called on by senators to ask what legal precedent exists on laws they were changing and she had to be on her game at all times. It was a really cool experience and I’m so glad that we got the opportunity to do something in person.

I grouped these 2 days together because their content functioned identically. I spent both days finishing up my research about overcriminalization and meeting with Mr. Markham. In my research, I thought it was clear that NC’s legal code was way too complicated and needed to be changed and simplified to make things much more simplified. However, Mr. Markham offered an interesting perspective that I hadn’t yet seen in my research. If we are too rewrite all the legal codes, we are essentially losing all previously judicial precedent that may apply to certain laws. This can in turn lead to many more appeals and trials for issues that may have been clear in the existing system. This surprised me and I hadn’t really thought about this perspective; however, it’s clear to see that there is not just one good solution for such a complicated issue.

-Miles

After spending the past couple of days looking into the intricacies of SB300 and beginning to narrowly focus on overcriminalization in North Carolina, I looked into possible solutions. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a whole lot of good answers to such a complex problem. Both the NC house and senate have made attempts at making the criminal code much simpler, so far there has been no success. For instance, in 2017 the house added an amendment to a bill (HB482) to create a commission to recodify (simplify) the language and structure of the NC legal code. Unfortunately, the bill eventually fizzled out in the senate and no solution was reached. This is quite a significant issue as an average resident in NC has no possible way to understand all the intricacies of the law, like the 17 different charge we have in North Carolina for larceny. I’m looking forward to continue to brainstorm solutions and for the trip the the GA next week.

-Miles

Today we continued to research more into the intricacies of SB300. I selected to focus primarily on a few articles in the bill (and in general) on the idea of overcriminalization. Overcriminizalation is especially prevalent in NC; did you know we have one of the longest legal codes of any state with over 765 sections of laws? This makes it incredibly difficult for any normal person to be able to understand the law well and often leads to people committing unintended crimes. For example, in the cities of Huntersville and Saluda, it is a misdemeanor offense to let your grass grow over 24 and 10 inches respectively. This topic so far has proven very interesting as it seems that there are not many solutions being made to solve this issue.

I look forward to sharing my research with Prof. Markham and discussing it further ahead of our visit to the general assembly next week.

Today I spent nearly all of the day researching the ins and outs of SB300 (the main legislation we are focusing on). In particular, I focused on 3 topics. Satellite-Based Monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders and a recent supreme court ruling pertaining to that, body camera footage, and when and when not it should be released and how vastly different procedures for releasing that footage are by state and even city. Finally, I looked into overcriminalization, something very prevalent in NC. We have one of the longest set of legal codes and people can get convicted of a misdemeanor in some places for simply letting their grass grow too high. These are all issues that are brought up in SB300 and I am looking forward to discussing this research with Prof. Markham tomorrow.

Our work experience began with Travis, Gabriella, and I meeting with Professor Jamie Markham on Zoom. He is a professor at the UNC school of government, who works a lot with criminal justice and corrections. In particular, he has been working a lot recently on a newly introduced bill to the North Carolina General Assembly, Senate Bill 300.

Senate Bill 300 serves as a fairly comprehensive overhaul of policing and the justice system and covers quite a significant number of topics. The bill covers things like making a public database to track officers’ suspensions and infractions, giving an officer the duty to prevent the use of excessive force when seen in the field, and increasing offenses for rioting and assaulting an officer (something Mr. Markham says was a legislative compromise in order to gain more support for the bill)

He then assigned us to focus on researching a few of the key topics in the bills that are widely debate. For example, using satellite monitoring on sex offenders (supreme court case Grady v. North Carolina), the legality and constitutionality behind releasing police body camera footage, and overcriminalization by stopping violations of a city’s code of ordinances from going on someone’s criminal record.

Mr. Markham also informed us that we will get the opportunity to visit a senate judiciary committee meeting next week where they may potentially be debating this very bill we are researching.