North Carolina ‘Iryna’s Law’ Takes Effect, Cracking Down On Repeat Offenders

“Iryna’s Law” took effect in North Carolina on Monday after lawmakers passed the tough-on-crime legislation in response to a Ukrainian refugee’s highly publicized murder on a Charlotte train.

The wide-ranging law broadly discourages pretrial release for defendants with prior criminal histories, requires mental health examinations in some serious cases and increases punishment for crimes committed on public transportation systems — provisions that relate to the August murder of Iryna Zarutska, the law’s namesake. It also adds ten assistant prosecutors to Mecklenburg County, gives the state’s chief justice authority to suspend magistrate judges, expands methods for executions and allows courts to extend probation sentences for juveniles they deem to be dangerous.

Zarutska was fatally stabbed on a light rail train by a man whom authorities identified as Decarlos Brown Jr., a mentally ill homeless resident with more than a dozen prior arrests.

The law requires jail or house arrest for anyone convicted of three Class 1 misdemeanors or higher offenses in the past 10 years. It also directs judges to order mental health evaluations for defendants who were involuntarily committed in the past three years or are a danger to the community in order to determine whether to institutionalize them again. Additionally, it bans judges from releasing defendants on a “written promise to appear” — the same declaration Brown made in January before police say he murdered Zarutska in Charlotte.

The law mandates that police inform judges about any arrestee behavior that shows they are dangerous to the community before detainment decisions are made. Judges must also order officials to provide a “criminal history report” on all defendants before deciding conditions of pretrial release, the text says.