A recent analysis of sexual assault prosecutions in North Carolina conducted by Carolina Public Press showed a shockingly low number of convictions in the western counties, but District Attorney Ashley Hornsby Welch says these types of cases shouldn’t be reduced down to a number. 

Drug dealers in North Carolina could face more prison time for selling someone a deadly dose of narcotics if newly proposed legislation becomes law. 

Western Carolina University’s Police Department needs help identifying a person who may have been involved in discharging a firearm near the South Baseball Lot on campus around 9 p.m. Monday, March 25.

When Chris Slagle’s partner of 26 years died unexpectedly four years ago, he bought a fixer-upper house in Maggie Valley with plans of healing from his heartbreak while pouring everything he had into restoring the old house on Fie Top Road. 

A broken window, classrooms in shambles, irreplaceable items destroyed, kitchen coolers left open and perishable food thrown all over the floors — that’s what Tausha and Lynn Forney walked in to find last week at the Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center in Waynesville. 

A Sylva man has been charged with assault after Jackson County deputies responded to a Feb. 7 call and found a man with a cut to the right side of his neck along Allens Branch Road in Sylva.

Robert Dylan Thomas, 21, was charged with assault with serious bodily injury and held on a $15,000 secure bond, with victim Jacobe Matthew Conner, 32, also of Sylva, transported to Harris Regional Hospital and later transferred to Mission Hospital in Asheville, according to a press release from the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.

The incident stemmed from a 6 p.m. call reporting an intoxicated male in the roadway yelling at a passerby. The call was quickly followed by an update to the dispatch center that a male had been stabbed at about the same address, the press release said.

A Jackson County Detention Center inmate is currently at Mission Hospital in Asheville after having been found unresponsive.

Under the Sixth Amendment every criminal defendant has a constitutional right to legal representation — and if you can’t afford a lawyer, you have the right to have one provided by the state. 

A juvenile justice system already stressed to the limit is about to be stretched even further, thanks to a change in state law that will increase caseloads as well as the need for youth diversionary programs. And although this coming change has been on the radar for some time now, there’s still no clear signs on who’s going to pay for it, how or when. 

A magistrate judge is often one of the first people you’ll come into contact with when you find yourself entangled in the criminal justice system.