A raft of new laws addressing crime and punishment take effect on Saturday, including a move widening a three-year-old North Carolina statute criminalizing cyberbullying to protect school employees.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina said the law may be the first of its kind in the country, and the organization said it will seek plaintiffs for a possible court challenge to change it, contending it threatens to chill students' free speech rights.

The law threatens criminal penalties on students who use a computer with "the intent to intimidate or torment a school employee" by engaging in the same nasty online behavior that already makes it illegal to target a minor.

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV)- A Catawba County man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Charlotte to 420 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release for producing child pornography.

In May 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Bruce Leroy Donald, Jr., 41, of Newton, on one count of production of child pornography, one count of a felony offense involving a minor committed by a registered sex offender and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

According to the criminal indictment, from 2007 to 2008 the defendant did employ, use, persuade, induce, entice, and coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct and knowingly possessed computer hard drives containing such visual depictions.

Based on filed documents and information brought out in court proceedings,