A Felony Deemed To Be A Misdemeanor Cannot Be Expunged

State v. S.A.M., Minn.S.Ct., 3/15/2017.  Twelve years ago S.A.M. pled guilty to a second degree burglary.  He received a stay of imposition of sentence, which became a misdemeanor a mere three years later upon release from probation.  In 2015 S.A.M. applied for an expungement; he stated that  he'd obtained a bachelor's degree, purchased a home, stopped drinking, was raising his eight year old son and stopped hanging out with his co-defendants. 

S.A.M. made his application under the provision of the expungement statute that allows a person to request the same when the person:

was convicted of or received a stayed sentence for a petty misdemeanor or misdemeanor and has not been convicted of a new crime for at least two years since discharge of the sentence for the crime.

Everyone screamed bloody murder:  the county attorney, the city attorney (for some reason), the BCA, the police all objected.  Not on the merits of the application.  No, they all said, and the trial court agreed, that S.A.M. had not been convicted of a misdemeanor notwithstanding Minn.Stat. 609.13,  subd. 1(2).

Justice G. Barry Anderson agreed with the trial court and all those state agencies in a 4-3 opinion.  Justices Lillehaug, Chutich and McKeig dissented:

By shutting the door to expungement for people like S.A.M., the court reduces opportunities for rehabilitated offenders to become productive members of society. Read properly, the law does not require this harsh result. I hope that the Legislature will clarify the expungement statute to reopen this door. Clarification would further what the Legislature has declared to be the state’s official policy: “to encourage and contribute to the rehabilitation of criminal offenders and to assist them in the resumption of the responsibilities of citizenship.” Minn. Stat. § 364.01 (2016).

The majority decided that the "was convicted" language referred only to the initial sentence and not the final outcome.  In coming to this conclusion the court continues to ascribe way too much faith in the ability of the legislature - comprised of part timers who haven't seen a pay raise in twentysome years - to draft (and enact) statutes on the same subject consistently.  Case in point is State v. Franklin, 861 N.W.2d 67 (Minn. 2015).  There the court was asked to determine whether a felony conviction that had been reduced to a misdemeanor counts in determining whether an offender “has five or more prior felony convictions” under the career offender statute.  Only because the legislature used the present tense – “has -  did the court say, no, it doesn’t count.  Presumably, had the legislature said “had previously been convicted of five or more felonies” then it would have counted.  It is the height of hypocrisy for a court that is constantly admitting to its own sloppy draftsmanship in past decisions to insist rigidly on legislative exactitude in its drafting practices. 

So, S.A.M. has to live with his misdemeanor being public.