Tag: Indiana

New role for veep: chief clemency adviser?

A forthcoming article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy argues that the federal pardon process ought to be restructured to make the vice president the president’s chief clemency adviser.  Paul Larkin of the Heritage Foundation proposes that pardon recommendations ought to be made by an board chaired by the vice president located in the Executive Office of the President.  This intriguing idea may appeal to the Trump Administration, particularly since the new vice president has had some experience with pardoning as governor of Indiana. Here is the abstract of the article: The need for reconsideration of the federal clemency process is a real one, and there is a consensus that the Justice Department should no longer play its traditional doorkeeper role. Using the vice president as the new chief presidential clemency adviser offers the president several unique benefits that no other individual can supply without having enjoyed a prior close personal relationship with the chief executive. Whoever is sworn into office at noon on January 20, 2017, as the nation’s 45th President should seriously consider using as his principal clemency adviser the person who was sworn into the vice presidency immediately beforehand. The president, clemency applicants, and the public might just benefit from that new arrangement. Larkin joins a growing number of scholars calling for the removal of the pardon process from the Justice Department to the White House.  The kind of board he recommends is similar to the ones that have operated effectively for years in Delaware and Pennsylvania, though in both states pursuant to constitutional directive. It is true that in his four years as governor, Mike Pence has issued fewer pardons than his predecessors — only three since taking office in 2013.  He has also recently come under fire for refusing to pardon a man whose conviction was vacated after he had spent 10 years in prison, instead directing the man back to court to establish his innocence. On the other hand, only a few months after taking office Governor Pence signed into law one of the most progressive pieces of collateral consequences relief legislation enacted in any state since the 1980s. So there is no telling what might happen if, as Larkin recommends, the role of clemency adviser shifts from the Attorney General and becomes part of Vice President Pence’s portfolio in the Trump Administration.       Read more

Indiana courts interpret new expungement law

On September 15, 2016, the Indiana Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s denial of expungement to a woman convicted 13 years before of forgery and drug-dealing, holding that the court abused its discretion in denying relief where the case fully met the statutory standards. The decision provides a window into how one of the Nation’s most expansive new expungement laws is being interpreted and enforced by the courts of the state. Judging by this decision, the approach to restoration of rights in this otherwise-conservative state remains encouraging. Here is Olivia Covington’s article from the Indiana Lawyer reporting on the decision, with a link to its full text. The Indiana Court of Appeals has reversed a Jay Circuit Court decision to deny a woman’s petition for expungement of her records after she was convicted of forgery and dealing in methamphetamine. In Mindy M. Cline v. State of Indiana, 38A04-1512-XP-2221, Cline filed a petition for expungement of her 2003 forgery conviction and 2004 dealing in methamphetamine conviction on Oct. 16, 2015, and the state did not oppose. However, on Nov. 13, 2015, Cline’s petition was denied, with the trial court saying it was “based largely on the nature of the convictions, the severity of the offenses and the relatively short duration since release from probation/parole on the most recent convictions.” At that time, Cline had been out of supervision for five years. At a hearing one day before Cline’s petition was denied,  Jay Circuit Judge Brian Hutchinson had told Cline that he remembered her convictions, particularly her methamphetamine conviction, and that he was tired of dealing with meth and heroin offenders. “I’ve had a belly full,” Hutchinson said of drug offenders. “I’m not doing favors for people that are causing these problems in Jay County.” Cline appealed, saying the trial court abused its discretion by relying upon circumstances that are not statutory bars to expungement – specifically, the type of offense and length of time elapse. The state wrote that Cline was asking for the Court of Appeals to reweigh the evidence and invade the province of the fact-finder, but in its reversal on Thursday, the court wrote that the state’s argument ignores the fact that the existing evidence given to the trial court pointed toward expungement. Further, the court wrote that it seemed the trial court thought Cline had eight convictions, rather than two. Although her original expungement petition stated that she had four forgery convictions and four dealing in methamphetamine convictions, the evidence at the expungement hearing showed that she only had one conviction each. Cline was young when she was convicted and has now satisfied the prerequisites for expungement, the court wrote. Further, the Court of Appeals said she has been consistently employed and has earned various degrees, licenses and certifications, including an associate’s degree in business administration. However, Cline testified that she lost her job as a store manager when the store owners learned of her record. She testified that she would like to return to management and would be more able to do so if her record were expunged. The Court of Appeals called Hutchinson’s remarks about Cline’s past convictions and drug offenders as a whole “troubling.” “Undeniably, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are a burden upon communities and judicial resources,” the court wrote. “That said, our legislature has provided a second chance for individuals who have in the distant past committed drug-related crimes.” The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the denial of Cline’s petition for expungement, with Judge Michael Barnes dissenting. Barnes wrote in a separate opinion that although Hutchinson’s comments were “not exactly artful and (were) unnecessarily harsh,” the trial court was within its parameters to deny the expungement petition. Further, Barnes wrote that state statute is silent on what factors trial courts may consider when deciding how to exercise its discretion. However, Barnes wrote that he would remand the case to trial court to clarify how many convictions it believed Cline had and reconsider its denial. Read more

New era for expungement reform? Too soon to tell.

A new article in the Harvard Law & Policy Review evaluates some of the recent legislative efforts to deliver relief from the burden of collateral consequences through new or expanded expungement laws.  In “A New Era for Expungement Law Reform? Recent Developments at the State and Federal Levels,” Brian Murray argues that many of the newer record-closing laws are far too modest in scope and effect to have much of an impact on the problem of reintegration, citing Louisiana and Maryland enactments as examples of relief that is both too little and too late.  He admires Indiana’s broad new expungement scheme, which limits use of records as well as access to them, regarding it (as do we) as an enlightened exception to a general legislative aversion to risk.  He considers recent legislation in Minnesota to fall into a middle category — and we could add Arkansas as another state to have recently augmented and clarified older record-closing laws.  Our round-up of new expungement laws enacted just this year finds very little consistency from state to state, with Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and New Jersey all experimenting with different approaches. Murray appreciates the need for a multifaceted approach to the problem of criminal records, and recognizes the doctrinal and practical shortcomings of a reform agenda that depends primarily on concealment.  His bottom line, with which we agree, is that “[s]kepticism regarding the benefits of expungement in the information age, coupled with the incremental nature of legislative reform, leads to the conclusion that expungement law must continue to develop as one piece in a larger puzzle.”   Read more

50-state guide to expungement and sealing laws

The 50-state chart of judicial relief mechanisms from the NACDL Restoration of Rights Resource, which is also posted on this site, is a comprehensive survey of all authorities for judicial relief in the states and federal system. We wanted to bring it to our readers’ attention in light of the new federal interest in helping individuals with a criminal record overcome barriers to employment and licensing through clearing their records. The National Clean Slate Clearinghouse, recently announced as part of President Obama’s reentry initiative, will “provide technical assistance to local legal aid programs, public defender offices, and reentry service providers to build capacity for legal services needed to help with record-cleaning, expungement, and related civil legal services.” This joint project of the Labor and Justice Departments will doubtless make it a first priority to survey the laws providing judicial and other relief in different states, to determine what sort of assistance lawyers will need to neutralize the adverse employment consequences of conviction, though the courts or otherwise.  We hope these resources will prove useful in that effort. Note that terminology and procedure differ significantly from state to state, so that those interested in more specific information about the scope, operation and effect of a particular state’s laws should consult the state-by-state profiles accessible through the Resources tab on the home page of this site.  For example, while the term “expungement” may involve destruction of records in a few states (e.g., Pennsylvania), more frequently it means a limited restriction on public access to records.  For example, in Kansas certain employers and licensing agencies continue to have access to criminal records notwithstanding an expungement order from the court.  In Indiana “expungement” entails no limit of public access at all — although some records may be sealed after expungement.  In some states a judicial set-aside or vacatur involves a sealing of the record (e.g., Michigan, Washington) but in others it doesn’t (e.g., California).  Most jurisdictions authorize sealing or expungement of non-conviction records upon petition to the court. In the past few years a number of states have modified their provisions for sealing or expungement of records, but most of these new laws reach only minor offenses or non-conviction records, and frequently involve long eligibility waiting periods that defeat their usefulness for reentry purposes. Conspicuous exceptions are the comprehensive new judicial relief schemes enacted in Indiana and Minnesota, and Arkansas’ reorganization and expansion of its existing expungement laws. A few states, notably Kansas and Utah, have broad expungement laws dating from the 1970s. Note that there is no statute providing for expungement of federal convictions, and almost no authority to limit access to non-conviction records — a circumstance that has led several federal sentencing courts to consider expungement through their ancillary jurisdiction. The most well-known of these cases is U.S.v. Jane Doe, now on appeal in the Second Circuit, in which Judge John Gleeson ordered expungement of a fraud conviction of a woman he had sentenced 13 years before.  (Briefs in the Doe case are available here.) Read more

The many faces of expungement in America

An article from The Marshall Project published on September 17 got us thinking about the elusive term “expungement” and what it really means, both functionally and philosophically.  In “Five Things You Didn’t Know About Clearing Your Record: A primer on the complicated road to expungement,” Christie Thompson describes an unusual class action lawsuit recently filed by a public-spirited lawyer in a Tennessee county court seeking “to have the case files destroyed for hundreds of thousands of arrests and charges that never resulted in a conviction.”  She proceeds to point out some of the pros and cons of expungement relief, including that expunged records may still be available from private background screening companies or the internet. But the problems with expungement laws are deeper than the article suggests. Quite apart from theoretical objections to relief based on pretense, the fact is that expungement laws have functional flaws even where public records are concerned.  For example, the Tennessee expungement law described in the Marshall Project article has no effect on records in the possession of law enforcement or prosecutors, or on appellate court records and opinions.  See Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-32-101(b)(1).  Moreover, it authorizes release of expunged arrest histories of a defendant or potential witness in a criminal proceeding to an attorney of record in the proceeding upon request. See § 40-32-101(c)(3). Expungement schemes in states other than Tennessee have an even more limited effect on public access to criminal records.  For example, expunged convictions must be reported to certain employers in Kansas and Louisiana. Perhaps the most extreme example of expungement not meaning what the term suggests is the comprehensive relief scheme enacted in Indiana in 2013, described in detail in a post on this site some months ago.  “Expungement” under Indiana law does not involve any limitation on public access at all, though nonconviction and misdemeanor records may be “sealed” after they have been “expunged.” Conversely, California’s law authorizing set- aside of certain minor convictions is popularly known as “expungement” even though it involves no limitations on access at all. Michigan’s set-aside law has a similar mistaken identity. As evidenced by the chart on this site, state laws authorizing “expungement” have in recent years been riddled with exceptions, including for public employments or licenses that authorize a background check.  A subsequent conviction may result in lifting whatever restrictions on public access are imposed.  Even the proposed federal REDEEM Act contains numerous exceptions that would allow many employers and others to gain access to “sealed” records. The point is that the terms “expungement” and “sealing” (or “erasure” in Connecticut, and “shielding” under a new Maryland law) are not legal constructs that are uniformly defined or understood, and there are almost as many variations on their functional effect as there are states.  Even juvenile records, where the concept of expungement was pioneered in the 1940s, remain in the public domain far more frequently than in the past. Older forms of judicial relief like set-aside or vacatur, which were extended to valid convictions by the Model Penal Code in the 1960s specifically to restore rights, and to guilty pleas under deferred adjudication schemes in the 1970s specifically to avoid their loss, are considerably clearer and more uniform in legal effect from state to state. As the focus of criminal law reform begins to shift from mass incarceration to mass conviction, it will become ever more important to develop forms of relief from collateral consequences that are clear and effective.  It is not clear that “expungement” or “sealing” laws premised on limiting public access to records will be the most effective approach to restoring rights and status. Read more