Delaware House Bill 410 (Prior Session Legislation)

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Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 11-2)
Status: Introduced on June 9 2016 - 25% progression, died in committee
Action: 2016-06-09 - Introduced and Assigned to Judiciary Committee in House
Pending: House Judiciary Committee
Text: Latest bill text (Draft #1) [HTML]

In recognition of the fact that criminal records can be a hindrance to obtaining employment, education, or credit among citizens who are innocent or who have led responsible and law-abiding lives for a substantial period of time since being convicted of a crime, this bill would expand Delaware’s expungement law to provide for the mandatory expungement of some low-level convictions after a set period without any further convictions (3 years for a violation and 6 years for a misdemeanor), and to provide for the discretionary expungement for convictions if 5 years for misdemeanors and 7 years for nonviolent felonies has passed without any further convictions, but only if the petitioner proves that the expungement is in the interest of justice. The bill also provides for mandatory expungement of all arrests and charges that did not lead to criminal convictions and eliminates the fee charged to people seeking expungement for such arrests and charges. Finally, under current law, matters adjudicated in Family Court are subject to a separate but substantively identical expungement statute. This bill would put the Family Court adult expungements into the same section as Superior Court expungements to reduce the redundancy and promote uniformity.

An Act To Amend Titles 4, 10, And 11 Of The Delaware Code Relating To Expungement.

Rep. Valerie Longhurst [D]	Sen. Karen Peterson [D]	Sen. Bryan Townsend [D]	Sen. Colin Bonini [R]
Rep. Paul Baumbach [D]	Rep. Debra Heffernan [D]	Rep. James Johnson [D]	Rep. Helene Keeley [D]
Rep. John Kowalko [D]	Rep. Edward Osienski [D]	Sen. Charles Paradee [D]	Sen. Margaret Henry [D]
Sen. Gerald Hocker [R]

Date	Chamber	Action
2016-06-09	House	Introduced and Assigned to Judiciary Committee in House

Type	Source
Summary	http://legis.delaware.gov/LIS/lis148.nsf/2bede841c6272c888025698400433a04/a036e1f0deb7924585257f9b0072d112?OpenDocument
Text	http://legis.delaware.gov/LIS/lis148.nsf/vwLegislation/HB+410/$file/legis.html?open