Category: Finance & Banking

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Federal judge expunges conviction to avoid collateral consequences

In what appears to be an unprecedented action (at least if it stands), a federal judge has expunged the concededly valid conviction of a woman he sentenced 13 years before, whose difficulties in finding and keeping employment evidently moved him to take extraordinary measures.  In Doe v. United States, Judge John Gleeson (EDNY) commented on the “excessive and counterproductive” employment consequences of old convictions: Doe’s criminal record has prevented her from working, paying taxes, and caring for her family, and it poses a constant threat to her ability to remain a law-abiding member of society. It has forced her to rely…

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50-state survey of relief from sex offender registration

We have prepared a new 50-state chart detailing the provisions for termination of the obligation to register as a sex offender in each state and under federal law.  This project was inspired by Wayne Logan’s recent article in the Wisconsin Law Review titled “Database Infamia: Exit from the Sex Offender Registries,” discussed on this site on April 15.  The original idea of the project was simply to present Professor Logan’s research in the same format as the other 50-state charts that are part of the NACDL Restoration of Rights Resource, supplementing it as necessary.  But getting all of the state laws…

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Forgiving v. forgetting: A new redemption tool

The following thought-provoking piece about the growing popularity of judicial “certificates of good conduct” was first published in The Marshall Project (www.themarshallproject.org) a nonprofit news organization focused on the US criminal justice system. The “forgiving” approach to avoiding or mitigating collateral consequences is an important alternative to the “forgetting” approach advocated by proponents of expungement or sealing, which tend in any event to be limited to minor dated offenses or arrests not resulting in conviction.         Forgiving v. Forgetting:  For offenders seeking a new life, a new redemption tool. In February of 2003, a much younger Barack Obama rose before…

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When is a sex offender not a sex offender in Ohio?

The Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether a young man whose conviction requires him to register as a sex offender should be excused from this collateral consequence on grounds that it violates the state constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.  The transcript of the March 10 oral argument in Blankenship v. State of Ohio, Case no. 2014-0363, suggests that the Ohio high court may be poised to invalidate the mandatory sex offender classifications in Ohio law as applied to a 21-year-old who had a consensual sexual relationship with a 15-year-old.  In 2011 the court ruled in State v. Williams that the state’s registration scheme is…

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President promises a more “open” pardon process, more pardon grants

During a Town Hall in South Carolina on March 6, President Obama spoke for the second time in recent weeks about his intention to use his pardon power more generously in the final two years of his term. Responding to a criminal defense attorney who asked what she could do to “increase the number of federal pardons,” the President explained that he was taking a “new approach” to pardons after receiving surprisingly few favorable recommendations from the Justice Department during his first term.  He said he had asked the Attorney General to “open up” the pardon process, and to work with advocacy groups…

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