Category: News

Kentucky expungement offers fresh start to thousands

  On Wednesday Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed a bill giving state courts authority for the first time to expunge felony convictions.  The new law, HB 40, allows people convicted of specified non-violent class D felonies who have been crime-free for 5 years to petition to have their conviction vacated, charges dismissed, and record expunged.  Expunged records are deleted from official databases (including law enforcement), will not show up in background checks, and need not be acknowledged.  The court and other agencies “shall reply to any inquiry that no record exists on the matter.” Democrats in the Kentucky House had worked…

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HUD limits housing exclusion based on criminal history

On Monday the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that housing policies that exclude people with criminal histories may be illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) if the policy fails to consider the nature, severity, and recency of the criminal conduct and is not narrowly tailored to protect residents and property. The new HUD guidance, which applies to private landlords and realtors as well as to public housing authorities (PHAs), stresses that exclusions based solely on arrest records violate the FHA, which prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and other protected classes.[1] The new guidance should end landlord reliance on electronic background checks to…

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Challenge to “Scarlet Letter” travel law moves forward

Last week a federal judge heard the first arguments in a lawsuit challenging certain provisions of the recently-enacted International Megan’s Law (IML),* including one mandating that the passport of any American required to register for a sex offense involving a minor be marked in “a conspicuous location” with a “unique identifier” of their sex offender status.  Other challenged provisions of the law authorize the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to notify destination nations of forthcoming visits from those individuals. On Wednesday the court heard a motion for a preliminary injunction that would block enforcement of the challenged provisions of the law…

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Judge Gleeson stepping down from the bench

The New York Daily News reports that Federal District Judge John Gleeson is stepping down from the bench to practice law. Judge Gleeson may be best known to the public for his prosecution of mob boss John Gotti more than two decades ago, but while on the bench he has been a champion for sentencing reform, criticizing long mandatory sentences and coercive prosecutorial tactics.  More recently he has stepped into the debate over the punitive impact of collateral consequences, expunging the record of a woman he had sentenced 13 years before. The article notes that Federal prosecutors are also fighting…

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Updated North Carolina relief guide now available

At long last I have released the 2015 edition of my online guide to relief from a criminal conviction in North Carolina. This free guide, available here from the UNC School of Government, covers the various forms of relief available under North Carolina law, including expunctions, certificates of relief, petitions to restore firearm rights and terminate sex offender registration obligations, and other procedures. It includes changes made by the North Carolina General Assembly through the end of its 2015 legislative session. This edition of the guide is longer, reflecting the greater attention given by the North Carolina General Assembly to…

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