6 ms·

Basically, I gave a ride to a couch-surfer that ended up committing a robbery. Instead of turning them in when I found out, I just kicked them out... but the po

Basically, I gave a ride to a couch-surfer that ended up committing a robbery. Instead of turning them in when I found out, I just kicked them out... but the police said that made me an accomplice so I went to prison for 6 months and was on probation for 10 years. I was charged as an adult, so it can't be sealed. Even if I managed to get the records expunged by donating enough money to $partyInPower, it wouldn't matter much because all the data brokers have already bought that information and are under no obligation to remove the information from their databases.

swalkergibson 13y ago
Wow, that sucks. Did you accept a plea bargain, or were you tried and convicted? If it was a plea bargain, did they start out at some kind of conspiracy charge to work you down to where it stopped?
- deftnerd 13y ago
  It was a plea bargain. At the time, after 6 months of dealing with an overpowering sense of being crushed by the legal system, I just took the first plea bargain they offered me. It was the exact same deal they gave the person who actually committed the robbery. The anxiety of not knowing what the future held made it seem to be a relief to just get things concluded. Also, as an 18-year-old, I wasn't thinking about my future 10 or 20 years in the future
  - swalkergibson 13y ago
    That is really terrifying. I apologize for all of the personal questions, but what were you facing if you went to trial? I am fascinated by this. Honestly, it sounds like you were the victim of one-size-fits-all justice...
    - deftnerd 13y ago
      I'm not a shy person about personal details. They were threatening to give me 99 years in prison for Aggravated Robbery, which is a Class 1 felony, merely because of my inadvertent involvement in the crime. That's on the same level as murder and all of those frightening things. The Jurisdiction was Williamson county, a neighboring county of Austin, TX. They are well-known for their no leniency attitudes.
      - swalkergibson 13y ago
        It is truly amazing how fucked up our system is. If they actually believed you "deserved" 99 years, then bargaining down to 6 months suggests that all they really care about is artificially inflating and maintaining their "conviction" rate and not actually, you know, justice or something. Thank you for sharing your experiences, I rarely get the opportunity to discuss things like this. Best of luck to you going forward!
        moron4hire 13y ago
        That's the maximum possible sentence that can be applied in any circumstance, but it would not have been possible for him to get it. There is a table for each class of crime that cross references the severity of the crime, the number of crimes committed by the person before, and a very small plus or minus factor for how much the judge likes or dislikes you. As a first-time offender, he would have only been eligible for the minimum category, and unless he was a complete dickhead in the courtroom, the judge almost certainly wouldn't have given the minimum of the category. A few months, at the most. This "99 years" bullshit is just gungho DAs trying to scare the shit out of the populace and assert their badassery.
        swalkergibson 13y ago
        You are correct, that is the maximum. Here is the minimum for Aggravated Robbery (a first degree felony): "Sec. 12.32. FIRST DEGREE FELONY PUNISHMENT. (a) An individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 5 years. (b) In addition to imprisonment, an individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree may be punished by a fine not to exceed $10,000. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 12.31 by Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1124, ch. 426, art. 2, Sec. 2, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1979, 66th Leg., p. 1058, ch. 488, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1979; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by: Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 87, Sec. 25.146, eff. September 1, 2009." I don't know about you, but 5 years seems like a pretty ridiculous risk if 6 months was on the table. That is their game. Prosecutors do not like to go to trial because juries are unpredictable. However, they have the overwhelmingly stronger bargaining position of being able to lock you up and throw away the key. http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm
justin66 13y ago
> it wouldn't matter much because all the data brokers have already bought that information and are under no obligation to remove the information from their databases. That's actually not right. If you get a criminal record expunged, the FCRA requires those data brokers to not release those records ever again to whoever runs a background check on you. If they do it, they're in violation of the FCRA. The thing that sucks is that there is NOT some kind of big hammer that comes out of the sky and smashes them if they screw up in this way. The process is basically that you'd contact them after the fact to let them know the record was expunged and they'd remove it... which doesn't help if you just failed to get a job because of the record. But they're supposed to stay on top of things and preemptively remove records like this before it becomes an issue. I'd guess it's worth getting an expungement if you're done with your probation. In some places it's easier than others.
- gst 13y ago
  Are all of those data brokers located in the US? Otherwise they probably won't care much about US law.
  - justin66 13y ago
    Yes. It's actually a pretty thoroughly regulated system. You could theoretically start a company like that overseas but you'd be doing it with secondhand data, since none of the state agencies would deal with you. It wouldn't work very well, you wouldn't attract any customers, and you'd end up fielding lawsuits from the state governments whose data you were borrowing. There'd be no profit in it.
- deftnerd 13y ago
  This is very useful information, thank you. One concern though is that, from what I've read recently, a lot of the data brokers refuse to let citizens view their own records so I would be unable to know what they say about me.
  - justin66 13y ago
    I think the current state of things is that you'll receive a letter if someone does a check on you and in that letter they'll explain how to get a copy of the report. I could be wrong about the specifics on that, but that's how a lot of the states were doing it and I think it might be federal law by now. It wouldn't hurt to call one of the big companies and just ask what it takes to see your report. (they might try to charge you for it. this is a bummer since different companies might not necessarily create the same report, depending on the quality of their database.) I think in the long run the industry is moving towards something like credit reports, where you can see yours for free periodically, but I don't think they're there yet. They might also be moving towards getting rid of these big databases altogether (they get sued a lot for inaccurate results) and relying fully on sending runners to individual courts to get searches, but that doesn't scale well enough to cover the entire country every time you do a search on a person. The big databases that pull in records from state, county, muni, DOC, and so on have their problems but it's not hard to see why they came into existence: law enforcement and the courts are not properly centralized. My sense is that the industry is in a state of change but I don't know anything for sure (except that getting an expungement is one of those things you might as well try since taking the shot doesn't cost too much and it might help :) ).

swalkergibson 13y ago

Wow, that sucks. Did you accept a plea bargain, or were you tried and convicted? If it was a plea bargain, did they start out at some kind of conspiracy charge to work you down to where it stopped?

deftnerd 13y ago
It was a plea bargain. At the time, after 6 months of dealing with an overpowering sense of being crushed by the legal system, I just took the first plea bargain they offered me. It was the exact same deal they gave the person who actually committed the robbery. The anxiety of not knowing what the future held made it seem to be a relief to just get things concluded. Also, as an 18-year-old, I wasn't thinking about my future 10 or 20 years in the future
- swalkergibson 13y ago
  That is really terrifying. I apologize for all of the personal questions, but what were you facing if you went to trial? I am fascinated by this. Honestly, it sounds like you were the victim of one-size-fits-all justice...
  - deftnerd 13y ago
    I'm not a shy person about personal details. They were threatening to give me 99 years in prison for Aggravated Robbery, which is a Class 1 felony, merely because of my inadvertent involvement in the crime. That's on the same level as murder and all of those frightening things. The Jurisdiction was Williamson county, a neighboring county of Austin, TX. They are well-known for their no leniency attitudes.
    - swalkergibson 13y ago
      It is truly amazing how fucked up our system is. If they actually believed you "deserved" 99 years, then bargaining down to 6 months suggests that all they really care about is artificially inflating and maintaining their "conviction" rate and not actually, you know, justice or something. Thank you for sharing your experiences, I rarely get the opportunity to discuss things like this. Best of luck to you going forward!
      - moron4hire 13y ago
        That's the maximum possible sentence that can be applied in any circumstance, but it would not have been possible for him to get it. There is a table for each class of crime that cross references the severity of the crime, the number of crimes committed by the person before, and a very small plus or minus factor for how much the judge likes or dislikes you. As a first-time offender, he would have only been eligible for the minimum category, and unless he was a complete dickhead in the courtroom, the judge almost certainly wouldn't have given the minimum of the category. A few months, at the most. This "99 years" bullshit is just gungho DAs trying to scare the shit out of the populace and assert their badassery.
        swalkergibson 13y ago
        You are correct, that is the maximum. Here is the minimum for Aggravated Robbery (a first degree felony): "Sec. 12.32. FIRST DEGREE FELONY PUNISHMENT. (a) An individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 5 years. (b) In addition to imprisonment, an individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree may be punished by a fine not to exceed $10,000. Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 12.31 by Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1124, ch. 426, art. 2, Sec. 2, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1979, 66th Leg., p. 1058, ch. 488, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1979; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994. Amended by: Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 87, Sec. 25.146, eff. September 1, 2009." I don't know about you, but 5 years seems like a pretty ridiculous risk if 6 months was on the table. That is their game. Prosecutors do not like to go to trial because juries are unpredictable. However, they have the overwhelmingly stronger bargaining position of being able to lock you up and throw away the key. http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm

justin66 13y ago

> it wouldn't matter much because all the data brokers have already bought that information and are under no obligation to remove the information from their databases. That's actually not right. If you get a criminal record expunged, the FCRA requires those data brokers to not release those records ever again to whoever runs a background check on you. If they do it, they're in violation of the FCRA. The thing that sucks is that there is NOT some kind of big hammer that comes out of the sky and smashes them if they screw up in this way. The process is basically that you'd contact them after the fact to let them know the record was expunged and they'd remove it... which doesn't help if you just failed to get a job because of the record. But they're supposed to stay on top of things and preemptively remove records like this before it becomes an issue. I'd guess it's worth getting an expungement if you're done with your probation. In some places it's easier than others.

gst 13y ago
Are all of those data brokers located in the US? Otherwise they probably won't care much about US law.
- justin66 13y ago
  Yes. It's actually a pretty thoroughly regulated system. You could theoretically start a company like that overseas but you'd be doing it with secondhand data, since none of the state agencies would deal with you. It wouldn't work very well, you wouldn't attract any customers, and you'd end up fielding lawsuits from the state governments whose data you were borrowing. There'd be no profit in it.
deftnerd 13y ago
This is very useful information, thank you. One concern though is that, from what I've read recently, a lot of the data brokers refuse to let citizens view their own records so I would be unable to know what they say about me.
- justin66 13y ago
  I think the current state of things is that you'll receive a letter if someone does a check on you and in that letter they'll explain how to get a copy of the report. I could be wrong about the specifics on that, but that's how a lot of the states were doing it and I think it might be federal law by now. It wouldn't hurt to call one of the big companies and just ask what it takes to see your report. (they might try to charge you for it. this is a bummer since different companies might not necessarily create the same report, depending on the quality of their database.) I think in the long run the industry is moving towards something like credit reports, where you can see yours for free periodically, but I don't think they're there yet. They might also be moving towards getting rid of these big databases altogether (they get sued a lot for inaccurate results) and relying fully on sending runners to individual courts to get searches, but that doesn't scale well enough to cover the entire country every time you do a search on a person. The big databases that pull in records from state, county, muni, DOC, and so on have their problems but it's not hard to see why they came into existence: law enforcement and the courts are not properly centralized. My sense is that the industry is in a state of change but I don't know anything for sure (except that getting an expungement is one of those things you might as well try since taking the shot doesn't cost too much and it might help :) ).