What do states owe the exonerated?

This month, two men – both freed last year after DNA evidence exonerated them of the crimes for which they'd been in prison – received drastically different news about how they might be compensated for those lost years.

Connecticut legislators voted to award $5 million to James Tillman to help him get his life back on track after 18 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit.

The Florida Legislature, on the other hand, denied Alan Crotzer's request for $1.25 million and let a bill die that would have standardized a compensation system for victims of wrongful conviction.

"I felt so disappointed," says Mr. Crotzer, who served more than 24 years in a Florida prison until DNA evidence cleared him of rape and kidnapping charges. He's been working odd jobs that pay less than $300 a week since he got out. "The bottom line is, I don't think I could ever put a price on freedom…. But they've got to put a system in place. [This issue] isn't going away."

Last month, the 200th person was exonerated due to DNA evidence, but the majority of those released have gotten nothing but an apology – and sometimes not even that.

"We are exonerating people who did not commit crimes, spent two decades in prison or time on death row, and when they get out, there are fewer reentry services for these people than for individuals who actually committed crimes," says Barry Scheck, codirector of the Innocence Project at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, which is dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted. "It's a measure of decency."

As DNA exonerations become more plentiful – and more publicized – some states are moving on the compensation front. Of the 200 men who have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, about 45 percent have received some sort of compensation, according to the Innocence Project, with amounts that range from $25,000 to $12.2 million.

Twenty-one states, along with the federal government and the District of Columbia, now have standardized compensation laws on the books – offering exonerees amounts ranging from $15,000 total to $50,000 per year of imprisonment. Thirteen states have introduced bills this year to either create or improve compensation for the wrongfully convicted. Some of those bills, like the one that gave Mr. Tillman $5 million, dealt only with individual prisoners, but other states are trying to standardize the compensation.

Crotzer – as much as he would have liked to see his own petition for compensation filled – favors the latter, as do most advocates of the wrongfully convicted. "It's like I've got my hand out begging," he says of the process he went through. "It makes me feel bad."

Texas, where 13 men have been exonerated in Dallas County alone, is considering a package of bills that would, among other things, raise the compensation amount from $25,000 to $50,000 per year of incarceration.

Vermont – which hasn't yet had a prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence – has passed a comprehensive bill that would provide between $30,000 and $60,000 per year of incarceration as well as access to healthcare and reintegration services. It's currently awaiting the governor's signature.

That's a trend that advocates at the Innocence Project hope they see more of. They note that in addition to monetary compensation, most of the wrongfully convicted leave prison with few skills and desperately need access to education, mental-health services, medical care, and job training. Currently, most exonerees don't even have access to the same sort of services that parolees get, since they're not being paroled.

"In Florida, if you're a parolee they give you $100 and a bus ticket," says Michael Olenick, the Tallahassee attorney who represented Crotzer pro bono. "Al Crotzer got no bus ticket, and no $100."

He also didn't get access to counseling, and he says he's struggled with some things since his release: He still wants to turn his light off at 11:47 every night, for instance, and he keeps everything in his room neat enough to pass a cell inspection.

Crotzer recently married a woman with two children and has worked a series of low-skill jobs ranging from street cleaning to janitorial duties. He's in the process of moving to Tallahassee, where he has an offer to work as a dishwasher. But he's hoping for a job at a nearby sheriff's office working with at-risk youth, and he's trying to stay sanguine about it all. "I kept my self-respect by not becoming the monster they wanted me to be," he says of his years in prison.

Neither Mr. Olenick nor Crotzer can be sure why the request for $1.25 million failed, especially after the Florida House unanimously approved it. Senate leaders said they didn't have the money – a common reason that states cite in not providing compensation. In Crotzer's case, some also suggested that lawmakers didn't want to grant any more individual compensation bills, but instead wanted to pass a "global" bill that would address all cases. However, the three such bills that were introduced in past years didn't go anywhere.

Some believe Crotzer may also have been hurt by the fact that he was convicted of a beer store robbery when he was 18 – a fact that would have excluded him from compensation under one of the laws proposed in Florida.

Olenick says he'll keep fighting and will refile the claim for next year's session. "When you handle a case like Al's, he becomes locked in your heart," Olenick says. "Until he gets compensated, I'm not going to stop."

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Alabama expungement law proposed (currently Alabama has no expungement law)

A bill that would allow expungement of criminal records under certain circumstances and if specific criteria are met is one step closer to becoming law.

The bill, HB 59 sponsored by Rep. Chris England of Tuscaloosa, "would authorize a person charged or convicted of certain felony or misdemeanor criminal offenses, a violation, or a traffic violation to petition the court in which the charges where filed or in which the conviction occurred to have his or her records expunged, including, but not limited to, arrest records, fingerprints, photographs, or index references in documentary or electronic form, relating to the arrest or charge, or both, and conviction in certain instances."

Depending on the type of conviction an individual received determines the criteria that must be met in order to have a record expunged. If an individual has been convicted of a violent crime (capital murder, murder, rape in the first degree, manslaughter, attempted murder, sodomy in the first degree, and etc.), he / she does not qualify for expungement under this bill.

HB 59 now goes to the Senate for consideration; however, if the filibuster continues, most likely, no further movement on this bill will take place this legislative session.

Note:  The State of Alabama did perform criminal record seals/expungements.  However, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered the sealed/expunged records re-opened citing the Judges who orders the criminal record seals and expungements lack legislative authority.  

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State of Wyoming and the federal government continue court battle

A federal appeals court in Denver has ruled against Wyoming in a lawsuit over a state law that seeks to allow people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to regain their gun rights.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that the procedure spelled out in Wyoming law fails to expunge the criminal record of people convicted of domestic violence.

The ruling is a victory for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agency had informed Wyoming that if it persisted in using the state law, the federal government would no longer accept Wyoming concealed weapons permits as a substitute for instant background checks for gun purchases.

Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg said Wednesday that he's unlikely to suggest that the state ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

"We now have two federal courts that have rejected Wyoming's position," Salzburg said, adding that the Supreme Court reviews only a small number of cases.

Salzburg said his office planned to put out a statement on Wednesday advising people who have gone through the procedure to expunge their misdemeanor records of the court's decision. He said the ruling means that if such people now have guns, they "may be viewed by federal authorities as being in violation of federal firearms law."

The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division in Washington represented the BATF in the lawsuit. Charles Miller, spokesman for the division, said Wednesday the office had no comment on the ruling.

The 2004 Wyoming law at the center of the lawsuit allows people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to petition in state court to expunge their conviction and restore their gun rights. The law requires that petitioners must have completed probation, and it limits people to just one such request.

The Wyoming Attorney General's Office said last year that Wyoming courts expunged 63 misdemeanor convictions from 2005 through last October. Salzburg said Wednesday that only one person with an expunged record had gone on to receive a state-issued concealed weapons permit and said at least two other such applications are pending.

The BATF objected to a provision of the state law that specified that an "expunged" conviction would be kept by the state Division of Criminal Investigation and could be used to enhance penalties for future domestic violence convictions. The BATF said that conviction records weren't truly expunged if they were kept on the books for any purpose.

Federal law requires gun dealers to perform an instant background check of prospective purchasers through a national database unless the buyer has a state-issued concealed weapon permit. The BATF said Wyoming's law could allow people to get a concealed weapons permit even though they wouldn't qualify under federal standards.

Wyoming sued the BATF over its threat to reject all Wyoming-issued concealed carry permits as a substitute for background checks. In May 2007, U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson of Wyoming rejected the state's claims that the federal agency had arbitrarily rejected the state law.

The state's lawsuit has attracted national attention from groups on both sides of the gun-control debate at both the federal district court and appellate court levels.

Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington said Wednesday his group regards Tuesday's appeals court ruling as a victory for public safety. The center had filed papers in court in support of the BATF's position.

"We should not make it easier for dangerous abusers to get firearms," Vice said. "And we've seen that domestic violence abuse cases are extremely dangerous when guns are involved."

The Gun Owners Foundation and the National Rifle Association had filed papers in court supporting the state's position.

Herb Titus, lawyer for the Gun Owners Foundation, said Wednesday his group is disappointed with the appeals court decision.

"We think it's wrong," Titus said. "We think this is a matter of state right -- that Congress intended that the states have the right to define expungement according to state policy and state purposes, and obviously, the 10th Circuit disagrees."

Mike Blonigen, Casper district attorney and president of the Wyoming Prosecutors Association, said Wednesday that his office has been advising people interested in petitioning for restoration of their gun rights that a decision on the case was pending. The state law requires prosecutors to review restoration petitions.

Blonigen said the Wyoming Legislature may choose to change the law to address whether conviction records are truly expunged.

"I think it's one of these situations, where if you're going to call it an expungement, it has to have all the characteristics of an expungement, and frankly this law didn't get there," Blonigen said. "You can't say you're going to take it away for these purposes, but not for these three purposes over there."

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Minnesota Supreme Court upholds limits set on sealing criminal records

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that district courts do not have the authority to seal criminal records beyond the courts themselves — a decision that may be bad for defendants but good for public-records advocates.

The case began in 1992, when a defendant identified as S.L.H. pleaded guilty to fifth-degree felony possession of cocaine in Robbinsdale. She was 20. After three years, the charge was dropped to a misdemeanor.

In 2000, a petition for expungement, or sealing, of her record, was filed, but the district court denied the request.

She tried again in 2006. S.L.H. argued that she was a single parent of four children and wanted to be better equipped to support her family. She explained she hoped to become a Head Start Teacher or a medical assistant — but neither job would be open to her without expungement of her criminal records.

Hennepin County District Court agreed. The court found in July 2006 that the benefit of expungement to S.L.H. outweighed the disadvantage to the public from eliminating her record and ordered all judicial records of the offense be sealed.

But the lower court also said it did not have the authority to order nonjudicial records sealed. That means that records at the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension still would be open to anyone who wished to see them.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the district court, and Thursday's Supreme Court decision basically affirms that.

But the decision seems toleave room for interpretation, said Mark Haase, staff attorney for the Council on Crime and Justice, which filed a brief on behalf of S.L.H.

It says granting her access to employment is not "essential to the existence, dignity and function of a court" and that granting expungement of records outside the judicial branch is therefore not within its authority.

But the court seemed to suggest there might be cases that are, citing one in which charges were dismissed.

"The jury, so to speak, is not completely out on it," Haase said. "We don't want to discourage people from trying to get expungements, because the opinion is not clear. I want people who may have a shot at getting a remedy to pursue that."

He said it's vitally important for people to have a chance at a clean slate.

"The vast majority of people who are trying to get expungements are not serious offenders," Haase said. "They're trying to move on with their life; they can't get a job. Do we really want people to carry that with them and (have it) be a hindrance to getting employment and housing for that long?"

The Supreme Court points out, however, that the Legislature has determined, as outlined in the Minnesota Data Practices Act, that certain law enforcement data are public.

"The expungement of S.L.H.'s criminal records held outside the judicial branch would effectively override the legislative determination that some of these records be kept open to the public," the court wrote.

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Texas: Hays County courts accidentally put expunged cases online!

When Hays County courts put their records online in April, San Marcos lawyers were pleasantly surprised that the county Web site let any Internet user look up court cases and jail information.

But as some defense lawyers began typing clients' names into the system, they got another surprise, this one much nastier. Their clients' expunged cases, which were supposed to have been erased from the system, popped up on their screens.

The county's $12.4 million software package from Dallas-based Tyler Technologies had a bug: a stray line of code that could leave the county bombarded with lawsuits from people who had lost a job or a license, or were otherwise hurt by the release of information that was supposed to have been erased.

"It caused a small uproar," Hays County information technology director Jeff McGill said. "Even though technically it was a minor issue, legally it was a major issue."

The Hays County information technology staff shut down public access to the site for searching records two days after finding out about the problem, and it remains down today. Tyler Technologies went to work fixing the bug and other problems with the software.

Anyone trying to search court records has to go to the district clerk's office, but McGill expects the Internet site to be back up later this summer.

About a dozen counties, including Williamson, Tarrant and Fort Bend, are planning to move their court records to the new Tyler Technologies system.

In Texas, almost anyone acquitted of a felony or misdemeanor, or whose charges have been dismissed, is eligable for expungement; afterwards, every law enforcement agency, jail, court and state criminal history database must destroy all records related to the case.

It's as if the whole case never happened.

Tyler Technologies programmers traced the problem of Hays County's not-so-expunged cases to a quirk in the way the county's old court record system deleted records.

In the old system, also supplied by Tyler Technologies, when the clerk's office expunged the computer record of a case, the case disappeared from screens and searches. But it lived on in the computerized database for about six months as a remedy for accidental deletions.

When the court's files were transferred to a new system last year, those expunged cases from the past six months came into the new system whole and turned up in searches, he said. About 25 cases, ranging from hot check charges to child molestation, were affected.

Tyler Technologies workers fixed the problem by manually removing the cases from the system. The county is now testing the corrected program.

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Romney denied pardons in Massachusetts, even from war veteran

A lot of people have probably read this article by now because it was reported by the Associated Press and featured on Yahoo! News, USA Today, CNN, and several other major media outlets.

How does he expect people to find employment and/or housing?

BOSTON (AP) — A decorated Iraq war veteran, convicted as a boy for a pellet gun shooting, seemed like an ideal candidate for a pardon from then - Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. But Romney, now a U.S. Republican presidential candidate, said no — twice — despite the recommendation of the Commonwealth's Board of Pardons.

At age 13, Anthony Circosta was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun, a shot that did not break the skin. Circosta worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle.

In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer. "I've done everything I can to give back to my state and my community and my country, and my commonwealth to get brushed aside is very frustrating," said Circosta, 29.

In his presidential bid, Romney often proudly points out that he was the first governor in modern Massachusetts history to deny every request for a pardon or commutation during his four years in office. He says he refused pardons because he did not want to overturn a jury.

But critics argue that the blanket policy is an abdication of a key power given governors and the president — the ability to recognize how someone convicted of a past crime has turned their life around.

During the four years Romney was in office, 100 requests for commutations and 172 requests for pardons were filed in the state. All were denied.

While he refused all requests for pardons as Governor, Romney has said that could change if he is elected president. Asked in last week's debate if he would consider pardoning Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was convicted of lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation, Romney said: "It's worth looking at that. I will study it very closely if I'm lucky enough to be president. And I'd keep that option open."

During his first year in office, the Board of Pardons recommended 11 pardons and two commutations. After Romney decided against granting any, the number of hearings dropped dramatically. During the next three years, the board recommended just four pardons and a single commutation.

His Excellency, Governor Romney rejected every one.

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Rhode Island House of Representatives OKs bill to destroy criminal records

Despite objections from the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Attorney General, the State Police and the Governor, the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations House of Representatives voted 46 to 17 for a bill to quash and destroy the records of criminal cases in which the accused was given a deferred sentence, usually in exchange for sparing the state a trial by pleading no contest or guilty to a crime.

The bill sailed through the House with no debate yesterday after a heated — but short-circuited debate earlier this week — in which proponents assured their colleagues it was aimed at helping people remove from their records youthful indiscretions that were keeping them from moving ahead in life, school and jobs, and opponents noted the bill goes much further than the state’s existing expungement law in that it is not limited to nonviolent crimes by first-time offenders.

Beyond that, critics argued that it could be used as a legal club to try to prevent newspapers from publishing facts that the public already knows about crimes — or perhaps should know — if they involve candidates for a job, including public office. Current state law bars people with certain felony convictions from obtaining state licenses to work in nursing, social work and auto repair: this would provide a way around that.

“So now we are rewriting history and telling the newspaper they can’t refer to something that everybody knows about?” Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown, asked rhetorically.

Current law already allows the expungement of a single nonviolent offense from the record of a first-time offender five years after he or she has completed a sentence for a misdemeanor, or 10 years after completing a sentence for a felony.

Despite efforts over the years by the minority community, the criminal defense bar and the gun lobby to shorten the waiting periods, this law remains intact and was used to remove 4,360 misdemeanors and 625 felonies from the public record last year alone, and 28,417 criminal cases from the public record since 2000.

Yesterday’s bill was sparked by a November decision by the Rhode Island Supreme Court on the treatment of cases in which the admitted criminal had been given a deferred prison sentence, as was the case in a number of high-profile cases involving accused stalkers, embezzlers, an admitted accomplice to a gunpoint robbery in Waterplace Park who traded testimony for a reduced sentence, one of the admitted co-conspirators in the Lincoln bribery scandal and at least one child molester.

The court's decision centered on two admitted criminals foiled by a judge in their efforts to get their records expunged. One had pleaded no contest to second-degree robbery; the other to a drug-possession charge. Both received deferred sentences. They both appealed to the high court after a judge ruled them ineligible for expungement: the first because he had committed a violent crime, and the second because she got into further trouble.

"Because they never were actually sentenced," their lawyer argued that "they had not been convicted of any offense and therefore all records involving their arrest and plea should be erased." But the Supreme Court disagreed. Since "a plea of nolo contendere is an implied confession of guilt," the court said "it follows that such a plea constitutes a conviction for purposes of weighing who is and is not eligible for expungement, even when it has been followed by a deferred sentence."

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