Gongwer News Service
Officials from criminal justice groups say they hope to see legislation introduced this fall to make a technical change to expungement law they believe would streamline the process and improve people's ability to obtain employment and housing.
The comments came during an online roundtable discussion Thursday on the state's expungement law that was signed into law in 2020.
Most of the discussion by panelists last Thursday was centered on the proposed elimination of a rule that denies expungement of a past criminal conviction if any subsequent convictions occur during the waiting period prior to expungement. The rule is known as the intervening conviction rule.
Safe and Just Michigan Executive Director John Cooper said he believed the intervening conviction rule was included in the law as an afterthought.
"I think that was a mistake, or at least something that was not well thought through enough when it was added," Cooper said. "Having a one-size-fits-all rule that's extremely harsh in application does not make sense."
Cooper and the other panelists said elimination of the rule would open the door to a more efficient process of expungement for thousands of residents.
Project Clean Slate Detroit Executive Director Stephani LaBelle explained that with the intervening conviction rule, lawyers often must file each application for expungement individually.
"They're waiting longer to have their record completely cleared," LaBelle said. "Without that language in the statute, we can file perhaps three petitions at one time without any issue, so it's proven challenging."
LaBelle said the average timeframe for expunging a conviction can take about nine months.
"Instead of somebody being completely done within a year, this could drag out into multiple years," LaBelle said. "It's just lengthened the process a lot."
She said driving with suspended license offenses are among the most common that hinder people's ability to expunge their records. LaBelle added in many cases, people have multiple offenses, and it is time-consuming to expunge them one at a time.
Micheal Ajami, director of the Department of Attorney General's expungement unit, was also supportive of eliminating the rule.
"We think eliminating this would help the process, especially for the applicants and the people trying to get that clean slate, it would make the process run a lot smoother," Ajami said.
Ajami agreed with LaBelle about minor driving offenses being a hurdle.
"To see driving while license suspended hindering a person from getting their employment or their housing or whatever they need is just … it doesn't seem to like that was the intent of the legislation," Ajami said.
Ajami said prior to the effective date of the law, the department received about 2,500 applications statewide for expungement. It jumped to more than 15,000 in the first year with the law in effect.
A further improvement that should be considered with the expungement law, panelists said, would be the creation of an online portal to search records.
Panelists also said the online system that automatically clears records also has issues, including that some convictions were entered into a database without the proper code, which can affect the ability to have them expunged.
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