Hundreds come to Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office to seal their criminal records

Her one criminal charge hadn’t stopped her from getting a job. It hadn’t stopped her from getting housing. But DeLoria McClain would like to stop looking over her shoulder.

McClain sat in front of a prosecutor and asked the woman if she could help her seal her theft charge. If she gets to follow her dream of starting a business or if she needs to apply for a job in the future, she doesn’t want to worry that someone might get the wrong impression.

McClain was one of the hundreds of people who came Wednesday to the State Attorney’s Office’s first Sealing and Expunging Fair at Florida State College at Jacksonville. Sealing and expunging a criminal case is incredibly complex.

RELATED | Read more Jacksonville-area news

The fair presented a one-stop shop to navigating the process. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office helped collect fingerprints; the Duval County Clerk’s Office processed paperwork; State Attorney’s Office staff filled out firms and looked up criminal histories; a defense firm could help those who didn’t qualify think through other options; Operation New Hope offered training and job placement; two legal aid firms, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Three Rivers Legal Services, helped people understand the law and offered a grant to pay the $75 fee if their income qualified.

Prosecutors, like Juvenile Division director Laura Lothman Lambert, were tasked with helping some of the same people who were once defendants facing prosecution.

“I think as a lawyer,” Lambert said to a co-worker, “it’s helpful to sit in this seat and talk to the people and see what it’s like on the other side.”

“And to see the consequences of what we do,” the other woman said.

The State Attorney’s Office said it set up the fair based on a similar event that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office regularly holds. Jacksonville State Attorney Melissa Nelson said she wanted to help people find work.

At the Operation New Hope booth, former State Rep. Reggie Fullwood, who joined the nonprofit after his own conviction led to probation, said they wanted to offer help to anyone who needed it.

“It’s kind of a perfect fit for me with my journey in life,” Fullwood said. “Operation New Hope gave me a second chance, and that’s why I’m trying to get you a second chance.”

Many who came Wednesday found they didn’t qualify under Florida’s strict sealing law. You can only seal a case if you weren’t officially convicted and had adjudication withheld, which means you were considered guilty but don’t have a conviction on your record. You can also only seal one adult case in your life, and only certain types of cases can be sealed.

Some came even though they knew they didn’t qualify because they wanted to hope there might still be a chance anyway.

Octavius Holliday, who leads the State Attorney’s Office’s Human Rights Division, had the task of sitting down with people to explain they didn’t qualify for sealing or expunging.

One man who wanted his one charge on his record sealed said he’d seen a friend post about the event on Facebook, and even though he knew he’d sealed a past charge, he wanted to see if it was possible to seal another. He wasn’t sure if his past charge was sealed while he was a juvenile or not.

Holiday sat down with a woman who had a lengthy criminal history of worthless checks — a crime that the State Attorney’s Office doesn’t charge any more. “I have to deliver bad news,” he said.

She had convictions on her record, and even a single conviction means nothing can get sealed or expunged. Even though the convictions were from decades ago when she was in her 20s and today she was in her 50s, there was nothing the prosecutors could do.

“You may never escape this,” he told her. While he couldn’t help, he told her there were two defense attorneys in the room who might.

The defense attorneys, Diana Johnson and Matt Lufrano, explained they could send her motions to vacate the convictions that she could file, arguing the convictions were manifest injustices, but there’s no guarantee something like that would work. In part, it depended on whether the prosecutors would oppose the motions.

The State Attorney’s Office, for its part, said that it would evaluate those motions on "a case-by-case basis.”

Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310