In the 1990’s, North Carolina, like most states, enacted common offender (or three strikes or repeat offender) laws. North Carolina has a few different statutes. The most important is the habitual character. Laws are usually inadequate as instruments of crime prevention.
But they are very hard. So if you have two offenses, be careful with the third. Three felonies, provided they were committed consecutively after each conviction, qualify a defendant for common criminal status.
Penalties for Crime Classes
North Carolina’s system is based on a grid that determines the penalties for crimes. This grid is divided into columns and rows. The offender’s criminal record is organized in the columns while the rows are organized by type of crime.
The North Carolina crime classes (found in the sentence table rows) are:
Transcript:
Well, we do. We don’t call it that. This is jargon from some other states but our situation is called a common felony or a common misdemeanor but it depends on your criminal history. It’s a weird part of the law because it’s a state, it’s not something you’ve done, you’ve committed a crime, and then they add an indictment that you’ve been convicted enough times that you’re a so-called are habitual offenders. The jury, in a separate trial, after you’re found guilty, consider it a formality, just look at the documents, and then you’ll be convicted. It’s odd as far as the legal formalities go, but in practice it means that in North Carolina you can be tried as a common criminal if you’ve been convicted of three felonies before being convicted of a fourth. . It significantly increases and increases the sentence depending on the crime you are convicted of. We also have, it’s unusual, but we have a common misdemeanor that makes it a crime and that applies to assault. If you have committed two or more assaults within a 15-year period and have been convicted of two or more assaults in North Carolina, your misdemeanor assault will be escalated to a felony if you receive your third assault that causes injury. You will be punished as a criminal.
Long story short, North Carolina has a three strike law, but it is different from other states and is not called a three strike law.
LOW-LEVEL CRIMES
These include Class H and Class I crimes. These crimes generally do not carry a mandatory minimum sentence requiring imprisonment. Instead of jail time, probation, house arrest, community service, or substance abuse counseling are often the punishments.
Some H offenses that fall within this category include: