State v. R.H.B., Minn.S.Ct., 10/17/2012. A jury acquitted R.H.B. of various assault charges. R.H.B. then petitioned to seal the criminal records under the expungement statute, Minn.Stat. 609A.03. Subdivision 5(b) says that the district court:
shall grant the petition to seal the record unless the agency or jurisdiction whose records would be affected establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the interests of the public and public safety outweigh the disadvantages to the petitioner of not sealing the record.
R.H.B. didn’t say too much about why he – well, Justice G. Barry Anderson didn’t say that R.H.B. was a male but I’m going to assume it - wanted the expungement. The state, on the other hand, submitted three boiler plate affidavits that said, well, not a lot, mostly that not sealing the records would make their job a tad bit easier.
Justice Anderson first says – as the court has said before, State v. Ambaye, 616 N.W.2d 256 (Minn. 2000) – that the statute creates a presumption that a petitioner whose criminal charges were resolved in his favor is entitled to the expungement. That entitlement means that a petitioner doesn’t have to come up with a laundry list of horrors and inconveniences that the publicly available record is causing him. So, R.H.B. gets the expungment unless the competing interests go the other way. The state has to come up with that list of horrors and inconveniences.
The state thought that its generic affidavits carried the day. The court thought otherwise, characterizing them as “unremarkable and generalized, and could be submitted in nearly every expungement case. The court also rejected the state’s other argument that since R.H.B. didn’t come up with a list of horrors and inconveniences then by definition the disadvantages of sealing the record have to outweigh the (not stated) advantages of sealing the record.
No comments:
Post a Comment