Restoring voting rights in Kentucky made easier

By John Cheves

FRANKFORT --Felons who complete their sentences can get their voting rights restored more easily under changes to the pardon process announced Tuesday by Gov. Steve Beshear.
Beshear said he will drop requirements for an essay and three character references, both imposed by previous Gov. Ernie Fletcher. He also will revoke a $2 fee.

Under the "barriers" placed by Fletcher, the number of felons whose voting rights were restored shrank from more than 600 a year to about 250 a year.

"This disenfranchisement makes no sense," Beshear said.

"It dilutes the energy of democracy, which functions only if all classes and categories of people have a voice, not just the privileged, powerful people," he said. Kentucky is one of the few states to deny felons voting rights after they complete their sentences.

About 129,000 Kentuckians can't vote because of a felony conviction, Beshear said. He said corrections officials will help interested felons with pardon applications before their release from prison or jail, and his office will process more than 1,500 applications left behind by Fletcher, plus 176 new applications filed since Jan. 1.

Jefferson Commonwealth's Attorney David Stengel, who joined Beshear at the Capitol for the announcement, said that Fletcher's pardon process was unfair.

Beshear said he favors House Bill 70, a proposed constitutional amendment that would automatically restore the right to vote to most felons. But he stopped short of saying he would throw the weight of the governor's office behind it. HB 70 has waited on the House floor for weeks while House leaders debate casino gambling and the budget.

"I'm urging over and over that it be called," said its sponsor, Rep. Jesse Crenshaw, D-Lexington.

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a non-profit group has been pushing HB 70 since January 2008.

New Texas Non-Disclosure Limitation

The Texas Legislature recently enacted another eligibility requirement for non-disclosures.

After September 1, 2007, a person petitioning for non-disclosure cannot have been convicted or put on deferred adjudication for another offense while on deferred for the offense they wish to seal.

For example, you successfully complete deferred adjudication for theft. However, while on the theft deferred, you picked up a deferred adjudication for assault. You will now not be able to petition to seal the theft deferred.

If you are on deferred adjudication probation and pick up another offense, it is now more important than ever to fight the new charge.

Judge agrees to expunge record of doctor accused in hospital deaths

A judge agreed Thursday to erase the public criminal record of a doctor arrested but never charged in the alleged killing of patients at a sweltering, flooded New Orleans hospital following Hurricane Katrina.

State District Judge Calvin Johnson also said authorities must keep secret all materials put before the grand jury that last month declined to indict Dr. Anna Pou.

Pou called Johnson's decision to expunge her public record "a huge step in helping me get by life back together."

Pou was arrested last year. Attorney General Charles Foti accused her of giving lethal doses of drugs to patients at Memorial Medical Center in Katrina's aftermath, but a grand jury refused to indict her on July 24.

At least 34 people died at Memorial after the Aug. 29., 2005, hurricane, many from dehydration during the four-day wait for rescuers. Katrina had flooded the lower floors of the hospital, knocked out electricity and left patients and medical personnel stranded for days.

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.

Former deputy‘s criminal record expunged in Former Collier County, Florida.

A former Collier County sheriff’s investigator who quit his job two years ago after he was caught altering painkiller prescriptions has been granted an expungement after successfully completing a drug counseling program.

Collier Circuit Judge Fred Hardt on Wednesday granted the expungement requested by attorney Donald Day, who represented Kyle Beiner, 33, after Assistant State Attorney Lisa Mead said the state didn’t object. Day was out of town and Beiner, who was not in court, was represented by another attorney in Day’s firm, Kristen Rodger.

Day said later that he will now move toward getting Beiner’s record sealed. Day said Beiner, of Cape Coral, got hooked on painkillers after being prescribed the drugs for an injury on the job.

Beiner, who had worked for the Collier Sheriff’s Office since 1996 before quitting in August 2005, completed conditions of a pre-trial release program, which included urine and Breathalyzer tests, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and reporting monthly to a probation officer.

On Aug. 24, 2005, Beiner was arrested on two felony counts of fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance for trying to get refills that weren’t prescribed. That was a week after he met with supervisors, who confronted him with information about the drug case. He quit at that meeting.

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.

What an idiot! How does he expect people to find employment and/or housing? Complete idiot!

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 state'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.

Republican Massachusetts governor Romney Willie Horton "I've done everything I can to give back to my state and my community and my country, and 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.

Romney rejected every one.

Colorado legislators have approved a bill that would permit convicted criminals to seal certain criminal court records, a move open government advocates say would impede the public's right to know.

The bill is now on the desk of Gov. Bill Ritter, who has until June 4 to sign the legislation.
The proposed law would allow people convicted of crimes to petition the courts 10 years after their cases have ended to have their criminal records sealed. The bill applies to people who have had no convictions in a decade and excludes certain criminal convictions, including traffic offenses, DUI, child abuse and sex offenses.

If their requests are granted, those people then would not have to indicate on a job application, except to a criminal justice agency, that they were convicted.

In a nod to the concerns raised by the Colorado Press Association, the bill was amended to require court administrators to post notices of requests to seal criminal records on court Web sites for 30 days. The public may also ask to have cases unsealed based on new information or circumstances that could tip the balance in favor of public disclosure.

Greg Romberg, a lobbyist for the press association, said the media is still opposed to the bill. "Public records should remain open to the public," he said.

Romberg said, however, that the changes at least mitigate some of the negative effects of the bill by allowing the public's concerns about sealing records to "come to light" in a court hearing, which the original version of the bill did not allow.

He also said the change about allowing previously sealed cases to be reopened could apply in cases where people have made themselves into public figures by, for instance, running for public office.

"That would be a situation where it would be hard for a judge not to take a look at that," he said.

Currently, Colorado law allows records to be sealed when a person was not charged or when charges were dismissed because of a plea agreement in another case. The bill now under consideration would also reduce the amount of time those people must wait to ask to have their records sealed, from 15 years to 10 years after all criminal proceedings end.

The state House approved the legislation by a 46-18 vote in April, while state senators passed the bill earlier this month in a 26-8 vote. The proposed law was introduced in January.