How do you annul a criminal record in the digital age? A House proposal to update the state’s criminal record annulment law attempts to provide a 21st century update to a pre-digital age New Hampshire statute.
House Bill 82 will have its first Senate hearing later today. Sponsored by Rep. Laura Pantelakos (D-Portsmouth), HB 82 passed the House by a voice vote in February. The measure is the fruit of a legislative study committee formed last year to provide recommendations to update the annulment law for the first time in almost four decades.
The main issue with the current statute is this: While a conviction may be removed from official records, that annulled conviction isn’t necessarily removed from public databases outside the courts with seemingly infinite storage capacity (like online search engines or media archives).
The first criminal record annulment statute was passed by the New Hampshire Legislature in 1971 and allows for a process to remove a conviction from the public record. The process works like this:
- Depending on the type of conviction and after a period ranging from one to 10 years following conviction, a person can request an annulment.
- A judge decides whether to grant the annulment after considering input from state and local police, the local prosecutor and correction officials.
- Conviction records for murder, felonious sexual assaults and other violent crimes cannot be annulled. The number of granted annulments has increased from about 800 criminal cases in 1997 to more than 4,000 in 2009.
- With narrow law enforcement exceptions under current law, any person who discloses information about an annulled conviction can be charged with a misdemeanor.
The leaking of an annulled record to a Portsmouth Herald reporter during the Rockingham County Sheriff election in 2008 was one of the main factors that led to the study committee and to HB 82.
The most significant change in law the bill would bring is to eliminate legal ramifications for journalists reporting both a previous criminal record and a subsequent annulment. Annulments also would become public records that courts would be required to release upon request — and media organizations would not be required to revise details of a conviction or deny public access to that content.
One fundamental pillar from the old statute will remain in effect: Those with annulled criminal records will still be able to truthfully say that they have no criminal record.
>> Thursday, May 12, Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on pending House legislation, including HB 82. Hearings begin at 1 p.m. in Room 101 of the Legislative Office Building in Concord.
This Daily Briefing was written by Michael McCord.