Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued two important decisions concerning the way our state imposes prison time on people who committed crimes when they were children. In State v. Kelliher and State v. Conner, the Court reiterated that children are different than adults and that the North Carolina Constitution imposes “limits on the […]
Tag: Ben Finholt
North Carolina Prisons See Drop in COVID Cases For Now, Delta Could Bring New Threat
By Ruthie Kesri More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, 10,000+ North Carolina prison-incarcerated people have tested positive for the virus. In the last three months though, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) has noted a striking drop in the number of cases in the prison system. “Once people were able to […]
Wilson Center Welcomes Ben Finholt in New Role Addressing Sentencing, Racial Disparities
Ben Finholt, Director of the Just Sentencing Project, joined the Wilson Center this month. He previously worked at North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services. Finholt’s work at the Wilson Center will aim to address extreme sentencing and racial disparities categorically through policy, the courts, and executive clemency, with the goal of developing a model that can be exported nationally. […]
NC Supreme Court to Take on 3 Juvenile Life with Parole Cases in Coming Months
By Ben Finholt Last year, Brandon Garrett, Karima Modjadidi, Kristen Renberg, and I published a paper on juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) in North Carolina in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology at Northwestern Law. We examined the cases of 94 North Carolina juveniles, aged 13 to 17 at the time of their offenses, […]