District Attorney Jason Smith Advocates for Stricter North Carolina Hit-and-Run Laws
District Attorney Jason Smith is actively pushing for significant changes to North Carolina's hit-and-run laws, aiming to elevate the severity of charges for incidents resulting in serious injury or death. Currently, such offenses are classified as Class F felonies, carrying a presumptive minimum sentence of 13-16 months. Smith proposes reclassifying these to Class D felonies, which would increase the presumptive minimum sentence to 51-64 months and typically mandate active sentencing. This initiative stems from cases like Tracy Turner's, who lost a leg after a hit-and-run, and Conor Mahoney's, a 15-year-old killed in a similar incident. In both cases, the perpetrators received what victims and prosecutors consider lenient sentences due to the current legal framework. Smith argues that the existing law inadvertently incentivizes impaired drivers to flee accident scenes, as proving impairment hours or days later becomes nearly impossible, thus allowing them to avoid more severe charges like felony death by ...
