District court records online search down amid 'Clean Slate' transition
Online search access for St. Clair County’s 72nd District Court records is temporarily down this week while an automatic expungement of certain criminal convictions is being cleared statewide.
It’s the result of legislation titled the Clean State Act taking effect earlier this month, two years after it was adopted.
Now, Melanie Gillies, the county’s deputy district court administrator, said they’re “kind of at the mercy of the state” while information over a range of misdemeanors and other convictions is taken from public access in every county.
“Our case management system, where all our case information is kept, is run by the state, and they are the ones who are going to update all the cases,” she said Tuesday. “… We have stuff that should be made non-public because of the April 11 automatic set-aside law that came into play. So, as of April 11, all these cases, like 28,000 cases from Port Huron alone, I think, were supposed to be set aside and made non-public so people can’t see them on the county website.”
While access had been intact over the previous two weeks since the effect date, Gillies said it was taken down by last weekend under the advice of the state court administrator’s office.
“We tried to leave it up as long as we could,” she said.
And as of Tuesday, Gillies said there was no concrete timeline for when the records update was expected to be resolved, though she hoped it’d be soon.
The Michigan State Police is making technical changes to the criminal history database, according to the state, as part of the two-year development process legislated in the Clean State Act.
The package originally adjusted rules and procedures for residents to apply to have some prior convictions set aside. However, under the “set-aside,” some of that was happening automatically.
Those convictions may include misdemeanors punishable by less than 92 days of imprisonment seven years after the sentencing date, those punishable by more than 93 days after seven years if there are no criminal charges pending and if the individual has no other convictions, and no more than four misdemeanors automatically removed.
Up to two felonies can be expunged after 10 years from the sentencing date or completion of a prison term, if there are no criminal charges pending, and if there are no other convictions in that time.
Assault- and traffic-related convictions that could be injurious, serious misdemeanors such as forgery, convictions punishable by over 10 years, and others that involve vulnerable adults, children, death, or human trafficking, are not eligible.
The Clean Slate Act in part originally aimed to help remove barriers for state residents in pursuit of employment, according to the state, helping thousands already.
For more information on the expungement process, visit the state’s Clean Slate page.
District court calendar access is still accessible during the transition. Anyone with questions is asked to contact the district court office at (810) 985-2072.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: St. Clair County District Court online search down amid 'Clean Slate' transition
