Appeals Court Limits Conditional Pleas

RALEIGH —Law-enforcement officers often attempt to have the most dangerous criminal defendants be prosecuted on the most serious charges possible. Often this means a prosecution is undertaken in federal, instead of state, court. A new ruling by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals changes the ground rules in these federal prosecutions by limiting the issues that defendants in North Carolina and several surrounding states may appeal while still pleading guilty. The case in point involved a man charged with possessing an unregistered firearm and a stolen one. He pled guilty but appealed several pretrail rulings, to no avail.