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Lawmakers push to provide adults a ‘second chance’ to expunge their criminal records [1]

['Mitch Perry', 'More From Author', '- December']

Date: 2023-12-06  

Under current Florida law, a person can’t have their criminal record expunged while an adult if they previously had their criminal record expunged as a minor — but some lawmakers are pushing to change that.

“Currently a person may only receive one expungement during the course of their lifetime,” said State Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez, a Republican from Miami-Dade. She said that was the case regardless of whether the person was falsely accused, wrongfully arrested, found not guilty, or had their charges dismissed.

Rodriguez was explaining a bill to senators at a criminal justice committee in the Senate on Tuesday.

The proposal (SB 54) would expand “an exception to an eligibility requirement for expunction of a criminal history record to allow a prior expunction of a criminal history record granted for an offense committed when the person was a minor.”

The bill would only apply to people who weren’t convicted of the offense that they were charged with.

Further making her case, Rodriguez told lawmakers that the inability for people arrested as an adult to get the charge expunged after previously receiving an expungement for an arrest as a child would follow them when they attempted to get housing, attend college, get a job in law enforcement or in the military. That’s “despite the fact that they were never convicted of a crime, and a state attorney or a judge chose not to prosecute them.”

Senators approved the measure unanimously on Tuesday. But the bill would need both the state House and Senate to approve the measure.

Rodriguez filed a similar measure in the 2023 session that was unanimously approved in the Senate. Its bipartisan House equivalent (HB 605) passed through that chamber on a 107-2 vote, but it was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who did so without making any comment about the merits of the legislation.

Democrat State Sen. Bobby Powell, of Palm Beach County, said he believed the measure was something that he supports, but asked Rodriguez if the bill language was similar to what was passed earlier this year in both chambers. She said it was identical.

“I think at a time where the state and the nation are having a hiring epidemic and businesses are hurting from [a shortage of] workers, this will remove the barrier of an arrest which had no conviction from someone’s record and allow them to become a working, productive and taxpaying citizen,” Rodriguez said. “Expungement is an area where this body continues to make meaningful reforms in terms of ensuring pathways of success for Floridians who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or made a simple mistake which should not impact them for the rest of their lives.”

An equivalent to the Senate legislation has been filed in the House (HB 97) by Seminole County Republican David Smith.

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