Got Thirty Bucks, MacLeod (or whatever yer name is spelled)?

[MKSheppard]

http://www.gazette.net/200303/montgomer ... 084-1.html

Commit a crime? Wipe it away for $30

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by Manju Subramanya
Staff Writer

Jan. 15, 2003

Gurdarshan Singh pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree sex offense in April 1997 for fondling a 12-year-old girl while teaching her the piano.

In November, the Sikh priest from North Potomac requested a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge to wipe his criminal record clean.

The cost of seeking expungement: $30.

A judge is weighing his request.

Expungement is a legal way of removing criminal records from the public eye. The law, on the books in Maryland since 1975, is designed to give people who have been exonerated of a crime a fresh start.

Individuals who are acquitted, whose cases have been dismissed or not prosecuted, whose cases have been placed on an inactive docket or who have been given probation before judgment, may seek an expungement. A person convicted of a single criminal nonviolent act who gets a full and unconditional pardon from the governor also may move to expunge his or her record.

Singh became eligible for expungement after a judge in August 1997 granted him probation before judgment -- basically throwing out his guilty plea conviction after Singh agreed to counseling.

Expungement is granted routinely in Montgomery County, say defense lawyers and prosecutors.

"Most people don't want something on the record to cloud or damage their future," said Montgomery Village defense lawyer James F. Shalleck. "It cleanses someone's record from a prior arrest."

And it is not restricted to the average Joe Shmoe.

Former Del. Dana Lee Dembrow (D) of Silver Spring had his record in District Court deleted after he was acquitted in May of giving his wife a bloody nose in a well-publicized domestic violence incident on Easter Sunday. Dembrow, charged March 31 with second-degree assault, was acquitted after his wife refused to testify against him.

Ask for Dembrow's case in District Court in Rockville, and the clerk tells you there is no record of it.

Dembrow said his defense lawyer requested the expungement as a matter of routine.

"Nobody wants something like this on the record," said Dembrow, who is still bitter after losing his re-election bid. "But it falls by the wayside when you are a public official. The mere allegation ruins you.

"Frankly, it is pointless in a case like mine," he said. "The formal expungement does nothing. It has been all over the news."

In May 2001, a judge allowed former Montgomery County Planning Board member Ruthann Aron to partially erase her criminal record, wiping out attempted first-degree murder and poisoning charges that prosecutors dropped. Aron pleaded no contest in July 1998 to two charges of soliciting a hit man to kill her ex-husband, Rockville urologist Barry Aron, and Washington, D.C., attorney Arthur Kahn. The solicitation charges remain on her record.

[Note by Sheppard: I met Ruthann Aron in jail, she was the jail librarian, hee hee]

Strangely, her entire file is now out of the public domain, not just the expunged part. A Circuit Court clerk said Aron's file was not available for public view. Docket entries about the case have been erased from the court computer.

"Oh, my God," said Sen. Sharon M. Grosfeld (D-Dist. 18) of Kensington, a member of the Maryland Judiciary's Committee on Access to Court Records that issued its final report in December. "That's a violation of public access laws. Criminal cases have great public interest. That should not be the case."

He paid for it dearly

"Certainly there are situations where we could agree -- a sex offense involving a child -- there is a public policy reason for the file to remain there for public view," Montgomery County Deputy State's Attorney John J. McCarthy said.

But the state's expungement law is "black and white," with little room for ambiguity, he said.

"What makes the case expungeable is there is no conviction," McCarthy said of Singh's case. "What really created the ability to give the expungement is the PBJ."

Probation before judgment allows people to complete the terms of their probation and have their conviction struck down. PBJs are usually given to first-time offenders.

"The real issue, as we have been debating in Annapolis, is whether or not judges should have unlimited authority to go back to cases and change sentences," Grosfeld said. "Here is a perfect example -- [the PBJ] allows a convicted sex abuser to wipe his record clear."

"That bothers me," Frederick State's Attorney Scott L. Rolle (R) said of the Singh case. "It's legal. But the danger of allowing an expungement on a PBJ here is that he can get a PBJ again. There should be a record of that."

"As we know, if someone is found not guilty, it does not mean they were not guilty," he said. "Someone may have refused to testify -- there are any number of reasons that made the case go down south."

Roberta Roper, chairwoman of the board of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center in Upper Marlboro, said her main concern is: "Does the victim know?"

"I don't think the law provides for that," she said. "It is troubling."

In Singh's case, notice of the expungement was mailed to the victim's house. But the victim's telephone number has been disconnected, indicating that the family has moved.

Barry Helfand, the prominent Rockville defense lawyer who represented Singh during his plea and subsequently helped him win probation before judgment, said the criticism is unwarranted.

[Note by Sheppard: This guy was my lawyer, hee hee]

"Fondling sounds more sinister than the case was," Helfand said of Singh's case. "This was a married man. It was just a stupid thing. He paid for it dearly."

"Families of victims would not want this person's record expunged," he said. "But if you look at it with an unjaundiced eye, this man is entitled to it."

Purging the past

Once a person applies for expungement, the request is sent to all law enforcement agencies that may have a record of the case -- including police, the State's Attorney's Office, the District or Circuit Court, parole and probation office and the jail.

If the state's attorney raises no objections within 30 days of the filing, a judge reviews the request and signs off on it. If the prosecutor objects, a hearing is held and the judge hears both sides before making a decision.

That's what happened in the Aron case after prosecutors objected to the expunging the attempted murder and poisoning charges.

McCarthy argued that both charges arose from the same case and were part of Aron's grand scheme to eliminate her husband, therefore a judge should not grant partial expungement.

Judge Warren Donohue disagreed and approved a partial expungement.

Pamela Beale, supervisor of the criminal division in Circuit Court, directed all calls about the Aron file to Aron's lawyer, Helfand.

Helfand said he was surprised to hear that the entire file was out of bounds.

"Maybe if one thing is expunged, the whole file is kept away," he said. "I don't know."

Expunged cases are filed in a secure area and destroyed three years after an expungement is granted. In a case involving multiple defendants, the file is kept until the prison terms of all co-defendants are completed.

Anyone disclosing details about an expunged record faces a misdemeanor charge carrying a fine of $1,000 or one year in jail.

Montgomery prosecutors review eight or 10 expungement requests a week, McCarthy said. In Frederick, the requests average 15 a month, Rolle said.

Expungements are usually sought for minor misdemeanors such as assault, shoplifting, trespass and traffic violations.

Good people; one mistake

Prosecutors, defense lawyers and politicians said expungement is well- deserved in most cases.

"If I was accused of murder and found not guilty, tomorrow, I would move to expunge it," McCarthy said. "People are simply availing themselves of the law; it allows an individual accused of a crime and found not guilty to purge his record."

"These are good people who made one mistake," Helfand said.

"If you are 18, 19, 20 and have a whole lifetime in front of you and you make one mistake, you shouldn't pay the price forever," he said. "To saddle them with something for the rest of their life is not fair. That would affect their ability to get a driver's license, a job, a career."

Roper said she knew parents or spouses of victims who were unfairly charged, found not guilty and had their records expunged.

"Those were legitimate expungements because they were undeserved to begin with," she said. "You can't say one size fits all. Sometimes a person has truly changed. It depends on the crime."

"If you are found not guilty, you do not have to carry that baggage," Dembrow said.

Maryland law specifies that an individual need not reveal any information about his expunged record when seeking a job.

Dembrow said he recently applied to the FBI. The job application asked if he had ever been arrested.

"I could have said nothing," he said. "But I disclosed my arrest. I didn't want them to later on say, 'Hey, I read the newspapers and found out you were arrested.'

"I think it's best to tell the truth."