Marijuana Policy Project

A bill that would allow thousands of offenders to hide all official record of one misdemeanor conviction apiece has passed an Assembly committee 8-1, but has an uncertain future before the full Assembly.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Curt Gielow (R-Mequon), would greatly expand current state law, which allows a judge to "expunge" a misdemeanor record only for someone under age 21, who requests it at sentencing. The record is not actually removed from public court records until the offender completes his or her sentence.

Under Gielow's bill, approved by committee last week, anyone convicted of a misdemeanor at any age could ask a judge to wipe the record clean, erasing from public files and index convictions for offenses including carrying a concealed weapon, possession of cocaine, or domestic battery.

Gielow said Wednesday that he drafted the bill so people with minor crimes on their records have a chance to get family-supporting jobs, such as those in health care.

"Everybody ought to be forgiven once," he said.

But Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said the proposed law would rob the public of the right to know about people's criminal records.

"It's going to create a black hole in court documents," he said.

Those records are used for a variety of purposes. Among many other employers, Milwaukee Public Schools uses the state court system's online database to help screen people applying to become teachers.

"It is done for everyone," MPS spokesman Philip Harris said. "There's a whole matrix of how we decide what (conviction) is relevant."

Under the bill's provisions, judges would still have discretion to grant requests to expunge misdemeanor records. No one could request to have records removed until four years after the conviction.

And in most cases, a person could get only one conviction expunged.

Once expunged, the convictions could not be considered by judges handing down sentences for subsequent crimes.

The Assembly Committee on Corrections and the Courts approved the bill, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote in the full Assembly.

Gielow has recruited far more Democrats than Republicans to sign on to the bill. He acknowledged he may have difficulty persuading leaders of the Republican-controlled Assembly to schedule the bill for a vote.

Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford), the lone opponent of the bill on the committee, said expunging conviction records amounted to "rewarding bad behavior."

"I believe in second chances, but I don't believe in hiding an individual record from the public," Suder said.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) said he probably would support the measure.

"I'm an open records advocate, but even more, I'm an advocate of saying if you do something when you're (young), you shouldn't be on the hook forever," he said.

When years-old records were stored in courthouses, employers rarely checked them. But the Internet changed that, he said.

"You hit a few computer keys, you find out a million years ago somebody did something wrong," Grothman said. "Your punishment never really ends."

Milwaukee Circuit Judge Daniel Konkol, who presides over the county's seven misdemeanor courts, said about half the people currently eligible for an expungement order ask for one, and that whether he grants it depends on the circumstances.

Sometimes, he said, a person's attorney forgets to request it at the time of sentencing, which under current law forfeits the privilege forever.

"This (proposal) makes it probably a little bit more fair for somebody that has gone on the straight and narrow," Konkol said.

He doubted the change would draw much interest.

"I don't foresee a lot of people coming back here looking for it," Konkol said.

Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann could not be reached for comment on the bill Wednesday.

D. Michael Guerin, a criminal defense attorney and former police officer who is president of the Wisconsin Bar Association, said he likes the proposal so long as its details prove practical.

"Who does benefit by it? Young people in the central cities, in fairness, young people all over the state of Wisconsin, who end up with one possession of marijuana, hypothetically, or something that grew out of a more serious traffic matter," Guerin said. "Should that follow them the rest of their lives?"

The way the law is written, "neither the existence nor the contents of the court's records relating to the misdemeanor" can be disclosed to anyone except the defendant or his attorney.

That would seem to allow a person to get multiple cases expunged if he appeared before different judges or in different counties.

But Konkol noted that the arrest records kept by police would still be available and said he believes a person's prior record would come up, either through a prosecutor's research or a judge's inquiries, if the person tried to game the system by asking for a second conviction to be expunged.

"People don't just get an expungement because somebody asks," Konkol said.