Expungement-help requests top 300.

Byline: Kevin Featherly

Last summer, prosecutors in Washington and Ramsey counties tried an experiment. They decided to leverage a relatively young statute that allows prosecutors to almost unilaterally expunge certain criminals' records, by simply reaching out and asking qualifying ex-offenders if they wanted that favor done for them.

The effort, which Ramsey County Attorney John Choi terms a "beta test," wasn't all that successful.

Of the roughly 1,300 people mailed invitations to respond to the idea, Choi and Washington County Attorney Pete Orput got about 100 responses. Many of those letters were sent out by a volunteer army of law school students working with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services. Most were returned unopened.

"The problem," Choi said Monday, "was when we found out that over a period of time, people's records and their mailing addresses change, right?"

So the duo changed tack. On Oct. 3, Choi and Orput held a joint press conference with Attorney General Keith Ellison, Ramsey County Chief Public Defender Jim Fleming and others. There they unveiled a new website, helpsealmyrecord.org, where ex-offenders can reach out to the two counties directly and get help sealing their criminal records.

The online push has been rather more successful. As of Oct. 13, Choi said, 311 people had logged onto the online interface and asked for help with Ramsey County expungements. Orput, Washington County's lead prosecutor, said Monday that his office has received about 80.

"We're digging through them right now," Orput said Monday. "We weren't sure if they'd come in slow. But they didn't; they came in fast. So we're just kind of working our tails off."

Concerted effort

It's probably the most concerted effort by any Minnesota prosecutors to utilize Minn. Stat. Ch. 609a.025, an amendment added to state law in 2014. The section is headed, "No Petition Required in Certain Cases with Prosecutor Agreement and Notification."

The statute says that, if a prosecutor agrees a qualifying offender's record should be sealed, a court "shall" do it, without necessarily requiring the offender to undertake the difficult, time-consuming and expensive process of directly petitioning the court.

Before agreeing to seal a record, the prosecutor must make a good faith effort to notify the defendant's victims of the proposed agreement and give them a chance to object. The law allows the prosecutor to seal records either before or after charges are dismissed.

...