NCPRO Newsletter for March 26th, 2019

This is the second installment of our occasional newsletter about NC PRO. Read on for some updates about the growth of the site, information about accessing additional online resources, and the (amazing!) results of our request for sample motions and briefs.

What Are You Looking At?

There are now approximately 470 registered users on NC PRO, and the site is being visited regularly by people all across the state. Since the launch in October of 2018 (less than 6 months ago), there have been more than 16,000 page views by thousands of individual users. We thought some of you might be curious to know which pages have turned out to be the most popular, as measured by the total number of hits. Setting aside a few non-content pages like the Home page, Login page, and Search Results, here are the top ten most-visited entries:

  1. Alleging and Proving Prior Convictions at Trial: Pleadings and Types
  2. Jurisdiction: Territorial, Personal, & Subject Matter
  3. Prosecutor Directory
  4. Motions for Appropriate Relief
  5. Disposition and Disposal of Evidence
  6. Structured Sentencing: Felony Sentencing
  7. Defendant’s Right to Appeal
  8. Subpoena to Produce Documents: Contents & Basic Procedure
  9. Securing Attendance of Witnesses: Generally
  10. Extradition: Overview and Process

 

Elements of Crimes & Substantive Law

NC PRO provides quick and easy access to legal summaries, cases, statutes, and AOC forms on criminal procedure and courtroom mechanics, but what about when you need substantive criminal law, such as the elements of an offense? When will you be able to access and search through that law as easily as you check NC PRO for information about an officer’s jurisdiction or the disposal of evidence?

Good news – you already can. SOG Professor Jessica Smith’s comprehensive and fully updated resource, North Carolina Crimes, is available and searchable online. More good news – anyone who already owns a paper copy of the current book (which all prosecutors do, courtesy of AOC) is eligible for free and unlimited online access. All you have to do is sign up, log in, and start searching.

To make things even easier, we’ve included a direct link to the NC Crimes sign-in page from NC PRO. It’s located in the “Resources” tab, found at the top of every page.

  

Great Minds Think Alike

In the last email, we asked registered users to contribute to the growth of NC PRO by submitting sample motions, memos, and briefs. We received an incredible response from the Mecklenburg County DA’s office. Before NC PRO launched last year, their office had already started working on a “brief bank” of sample documents including responses to suppression motions, requests to amend indictments, sample jury voir dire questions, and much more. Rather than duplicating efforts, they have generously submitted that collection of more than 150 documents for us to upload to NC PRO. These documents will begin appearing on the site over the next few weeks. We are particularly grateful to District Attorney Spencer Merriweather III, Assistant District Attorney Samantha Pendergrass, and all the individual prosecutors in District 26 who created the documents. Truly, thank you.

Thanks as well to all the other prosecutors who responded to our request for uploads. As promised, we will be mailing out a small token of thanks to three lucky winners who submitted documents:  Nicholas Benjamin, District 40; Beth Dierauf, District 42; and Mary Ann Courtney, District 24. We also managed to lay our hands on a couple of extra mugs, so if you submitted a brief before February 28th but weren’t one of the lucky three, send us an email and we’ll see what we can do.

This is a great start, so please keep those uploads coming. And as always, feel free to contact us if you have any other suggestions, questions, or comments about NC PRO.

Sincerely,

NC PRO team