Continuing from the previous post, if the Stivers bill passes, these felonies would be eligible for expungement ten years after completing the sentence (including probation and parole):

• KRS 218A.1416: Possession of a Controlled Substance, Second Degree: This is currently a misdemeanor, but for many years, a second offense could be enhanced to a felony. Ultimately, anyone should consider voiding a conviction for PCS instead (we will talk about this procedure in a future post).
• KRS 218A.1417:  Possession of a Controlled Substance, Third Degree: same situation as above.
• KRS 218A.1418: An older version of the “Theft of a Controlled Substance”statute.
• KRS 218A.1439: Trafficking in or transferring a dietary supplement, second offense: mainly used to prosecutor people selling ephedrine related substances. I would be shocked if there were more than a handful of felony convictions for this.
• KRS 218A.282: Forgery of a prescription: self explanatory.
• KRS 218A.284: Criminal possession of a forged prescription.
• KRS 218A.286: Theft, criminal possession, trafficking, or unlawful possession of a prescription or blank.
• KRS 218A.320: Criminal possession of a medical record; penalties. It is what it says. Using a medical record not your own to try to get controlled substances.
• KRS 218A.322: Theft of a medical record; penalties. Same as above.
• KRS 218A.324: Criminal falsification of a medical record; penalties. Same.
• KRS 244.165: Unlawful sale and shipment by out-of-state seller directly to a Kentucky consumer; permissible shipments of wine into Kentucky by out-of-state small farm wineries; penalty. A law that almost certainly no one was ever prosecuted under. Was declared unconstitutional in 2008.
• KRS 286.11-057: Making a False Statement in a number of Financial disclosures.
• KRS 304.47-025: Felony offense involving dishonesty or breach of trust; fraudulent insurance act; penalties. Various insurance fraud crimes by insurers.
• KRS 324.990: Engaging in real estate brokerage without license; penalties. Expungement for all of those people who have twice been convicted of selling real estate without a license.
• KRS 365.241: Counterfeiting intellectual property; penalties; disposition of property. Somewhat more common. Selling fake sunglasses, purses, etc. worth over $1000.
• KRS 434.155: Filing illegal lien. More financial crimes.
• KRS 434.675: Use of scanning device or reencoder to obtain payment card information prohibited. Skimming credit cards to duplicate them.
• KRS 434.850: Unlawful access to a computer in the second degree. Computer hacking that causes over $300 in damages. I’ve seen it used when employees hacked cash registers.
• KRS 434.872: Disclosure of information from financial information repository; penalties. This covers social engineering scams at banks where scammers try to get the banks to disclose information on account holders.

Tomorrow I’ll cover the crimes that will be expungeable under the Stivers bill that are a little more common. The rest come from the Kentucky Penal Code and are more of what we think of when we think of traditional criminal law cases. So far, it’s kind of underwhelming, but a lot of the expungeable felonies will be discussed tomorrow. No matter what, this bill is better than our current situation.

I’m trying hard to break down what offenses will be expungeable under the Stivers Bill. Of course, this is all subject to change as the bill hasn’t yet passed. I got through about the first third of them tonight. The rest will have to wait for a later post. That being said, here is my first post on what offenses are eligible for expungement under Stivers’ bill:

• KRS 17.175 – dissemination or misuse of the state DNA database.
• KRS 186.990 – Theft of vehicle registration stickers; various other tax provisions related to dealers’ tags
• KRS 194A.505 – commonly referred to as “False Statement to Receive Benefits”. Welfare/Food stamps fraud.
• KRS 194B.505 – was repealed in 2005. Believe it may be also related to benefits fraud, but will have to check older law books.
• KRS 217.181 – Theft of a Legend Drug. Stealing a prescribed substance that isn’t subject to the controlled substance act.
• KRS 217.207 – Theft of or trafficking in prescription blanks, second offense.
• KRS 217.208 – Forgery of a prescription.
• KRS 218A.240 – Making a false statement to procure a controlled substance.
• KRS 218A.1415 – Possession of a Controlled Substance, First Degree. Cocaine, Meth, LSD.

I’ll be back tomorrow to parse some more. Sorry this is taking so long, there are some esoteric parts of the code in the bill.

Here is the link for what will likely become the Kentucky Class D Felony Expungement bill. Here is great coverage from CN2. It still has to be passed, but as it was authored by the Senate President, and our Governor has already voiced his support, it looks like we will, at the very least, get this bill. I appreciate the foresight of Senator Stivers and Governor Bevin to push for this, but I have a few thoughts.

Here are my initial reactions:

1. Ten years after completion of the sentence is just TOO long. There is no empirical reason to pick ten years.  The only basis for this number is the number of fingers on two hands. The reality is that most Class D felons will wait a year to be sentenced after being convicted, and then serve a lengthy probation or parole. While better than nothing, this bill restricts relief to people who have long since aged out of their prime wage earning years. If we want people who make a mistake when they are young to be contributing members of our economy, the right path isn’t to wait until they are 35 to allow for expungement. Forcing people out of the mainstream economy for 15 years just continues to create new felonies.
2. A $500 application fee is steep. While I understand the budget shortfall, the amount of tax revenues that can be generated from getting former felons to higher paying jobs surely must outweigh the short term gains of the few lucky people able to save the high fee.
3. Class D Trafficking SHOULD be expungeable. The felon-creation-industrial-complex started as a reaction to the war on drugs. The vast majority of people who will benefit from this bill were addicted to drugs. To deny petty traffickers the possibility of expungement seems to miss the point. I know that this bill is politically unpopular. Be HARD on high-level traffickers. The dime-bag -selling addicts who cleaned their habits a decade ago deserve a second chance.

I’ll be back tomorrow to offer the plain-language list of offenses that are expungeable under this bill. I do want to say that I sincerely appreciate that Senator Stivers authored this bill. It’s not perfect, and hopefully, after debate, we will get something better. I know he is walking a tight-rope with his constituents and I do appreciate him putting his neck out on this.

More tomorrow friends.

It looks like we may be getting some movement in the near future on expungement, and I am told that the final bill has not been as weakened as we all may have worried. While this article  predicted that we would hear something last week, I suspect that next week may be more likely. If you have ANY time, please contact Senate President Stivers, who will likely be authoring the new law. His contact information is here. I know that as a resident of Manchester, Senator Stivers has seen firsthand the damage that felony-first prosecution has had on our communities. He has seen the pain that drug addiction has caused and the further pain that a felony conviction causes when it disqualifies good people from good jobs.

Please, if you have any interest in this passing, reach out to him this weekend. Class D expungement in Kentucky is about more than getting back to work. It is about restoring gun rights, restoring voting rights, and restoring jury duty. For decades we have case people who have made a minor mistake aside. Now we have the opportunity to fix that. I hope our Senate gets it right the first time, because there may not be a second one.

 

There is no clever or funny or any other way around the sad, sober-reality:

1. There are 243,842 disenfranchised felons in Kentucky. 180,984 have already served their sentences out.
2. There are 56,920 disenfranchised felon African Americans in Kentucky. 42,552 of them have served their sentence out.
3. 3,315,996 is total estimated KY Population in the 2010 census.
4. 254,797 is total estimated 2010 African American KY population.
5. 7% of Kentuckians are ex-felons, are currently serving time, or are on probation or parole
6. 22% of African-American Kentuckians are ex-felons, are currently serving time, or are on probation or parole.
7. If we subtract the number of African Americans who are convicted felons from the total number of convicted felons, and divide by the total population of non-African American Kentuckians, we find that 5.7% of non-African Americans have been convicted of felonies in Kentucky.
8. Therefore, if we consider only race, an African American Kentuckian (22%) is four times as likely to be convicted of a felony as a non-African American Kentuckian (5.7%).

All of these numbers are based on a study by the Sentencing Project.  While we can debate the cause of these disparities, a 400% increase in likelihood of felony conviction is very difficult to innocently explain away. The fact that African Americans are overwhelmingly, disproportionately the target of felony convictions in Kentucky is just another reason to pass Class-D expungement.