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Almost three years ago, Connell Dominguez Tate was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. But very few publicly accessible accounts of that arrest can now be found.
A jury found Tate not guilty last week and a state law that went into effect Dec. 1 automatically expunged his record of that charge and trial, meaning they are no longer public records in the state court database and will not come up in a typical background check.
Daniel Bowes, Director of Policy and Advocacy American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina
Times-News
Daniel Bowes
“I grew up in Burlington and really saw the collateral consequences of criminal records everywhere in Burlington,” said Daniel Bowes, North Carolina ACLU attorney. “A landlord or employer doing a background check often just see an entry there that lists a charge. They don’t necessarily see if it was dismissed or they were found not guilty.”
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Tate, said his lawyer Craig Thompson, went with his wife to pick up their granddaughter at her father’s house that day in 2019. The woman next door started shouting at them for using the driveway. There was a verbal back and forth. Tate moved the car into the street and the neighbor’s fiancé joined the argument.
The man, Thompson said, went to the trunk of his car and threatened to take out a gun. Tate, 55 at the time with several serious medical issues, took a box cutter from his car, testifying that he was protecting his wife. The man took out a hammer instead of a gun and swung at Tate and Tate cut him on the arm, which basically ended the confrontation. The woman called the police, who charged Tate.
That couple had very different versions of what happened, Thompson said, saying Tate attacked them unprovoked, but the verdict favored Tate.
“I’m very happy about that,” Thompson said. “This is a nice couple. They don’t cause anybody any trouble.”
The law that made expunction automatic, the Second Chance Act, also made more convictions eligible for expunction, said John Rubin, legal expert with the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill, including non-violent felony convictions. But there are limits. Some crimes require waiting periods as long as 20 years, there are limits on how many prior convictions or prior expunctions a petitioner has, and some of those requirements affect others.
In 2010, North Carolina allowed one expunction of a misdemeanor per lifetime, Bowes said. There had been many bills to broaden that, but the Democratic leadership tended to stop them to avoid looking soft on crime. Republicans were more open to reform.
“There were very conservative individuals who saw their communities, their nephews not be able to get a job because of a DWI or a drug charge or whatever,” Bowes said. “A lot conversation started with young people.”
There were also large demonstrations supporting reform at the Capitol, and just about every year the law broadened, Rubin said.
The Second Chance Act is a significant step forward, Bowes said, and passed with rare bipartisan support in the state legislature. Most of the provisions went into effect at the end of 2020, but automatic expunctions for dismissed charges and not-guilty verdicts took another year, Rubin said, to give the court system more time to prepare.
It affects the most sympathetic people. Getting dismissed charges expunged used to cost $500 to $1,000, Bowes said. Just 5% or 6% of eligible people take the time and expense to have charges taken off their records, Rubin said.
This is really a nationwide effort, and many states have broadened expunction eligibility. Just five states don’t allow some level of expunction, according to the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, though just a handful have made it automatic.
There is interest in further reform like having no limits on the number of misdemeanors a person can have expunged, Bowes said, because of the economic benefits and because the courts and law enforcement can open those files if someone offends again.
The Administrative Office of Courts Guidance on Automatic Expunctions recommends local clerks of court store those expunged files separately from public files and restrict them to the elected Clerk of Superior Court or designated staff members.
“We’re not trying to shield individuals from the consequences of subsequent criminal action,” Bowes said.
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
