- Criminal record maryland judiciary case search update#
- Criminal record maryland judiciary case search manual#
Earlier this year, a law went into effect that prohibits the Maryland Judiciary Case Search, the state’s public-facing court record system, from displaying a District Court case with only cannabis possession charges if it was dismissed before Oct.
The legislature has already made some changes. In concert with CJIS, other divisions under DPSCS, like the Division of Parole and Probation and Division of Corrections, must review their systems to also ensure the expunged record has been removed.īoth Sessa and Morrissey told the House workgroup that expunging older records is much more labor-intensive because electronic records are relatively new.
Criminal record maryland judiciary case search update#
If it’s found, Sessa said, staff will update the system to remove it and will send notice to other agencies that may contain similar information, like fingerprints and mugshots.Ī letter of compliance is then sent to the court to confirm that the record has been eradicated. When someone is granted a court order for expungement, CJIS receives the record and a tracking and case number, and staff will search the central database to determine if the record exists. Orders must then be served to any organization that has come into contact with the case, like the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS).Īccording to Rachel Sessa, the chief of staff for the secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSCS), CJIS oversees the state’s computerized system that maintains state criminal identification records. If they object, a hearing will be conducted to grant or deny the petition. To expunge a record, defendants serve petitions to the State’s Attorney’s Office, which has 30-days to object to the request to expunge.
The process of expunging even one record can take a minimum of 60 to 90 days. Jazz Lewis (D-Prince George’s) both sponsored legalization bills last year.Īccording to both fiscal notes, the Judiciary estimated hundreds of thousands of cases would have been eligible for expungement, which Tilburg called a “very basic estimate.” Senate Finance Committee Vice Chair Brian Feldman (D-Montgomery) and Del. If the legislature takes the expungement route, Morrissey said the Judiciary estimated that it would take “several hundred additional clerks” to go through “millions of case records” over a “several-year period.” Sealing, which happens when someone facing certain charges asks a judge to limit access to their records for a reason the judge finds compelling.Shielding, which occurs a judge grants a request to keep records relating to the conviction of certain crimes from public view or.Expungement, which completely removes information about a case from court and police records.Morrissey laid out three routes that the legislature could take to eliminate prior cannabis charges: William Tilburg, the executive director of the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, told the Senate Finance Committee at a meeting Tuesday that, of the states that have decriminalized cannabis possession, Maryland has the lowest decriminalized possession amount.īut he also said that arrests for possession went down 11.6% from 2018 to 2019. Under current law, the possession of fewer than 10 grams of cannabis is a $100 civil penalty 10 grams or more is a criminal offense punishable by up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both. Morrissey told the House Cannabis Referendum and Legalization Workgroup on Wednesday morning.
Criminal record maryland judiciary case search manual#
“We are at the point where we have done everything that we can do technologically, and it’s going to require a manual intervention for anything else that’s required,” Maryland District Court Chief Judge John P. House and Senate lawmakers weighed the equity and public safety pros and the costly, time-intensive cons of criminal record expungement if cannabis is legalized at virtual meetings this week. Photo by Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Bloomberg Creative via Getty. A technician inspects the leaves of cannabis plants growing inside a controlled environment.