Domestic Assault Charges Expunged

Wilson & Clas’s client was wrongly accused of having committed domestic assault stemming from an incident in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. After securing dismissal of the criminal charges at the Hennepin County District Court, the firm pursued comprehensive statutory expungement of the outstanding executive and judicial branch records under Minn. Stat. § 609A. A statutory expungement is the legal process by which criminal records held by both the courts and the executive branch agencies (such as the police, the county or city attorney, and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension) can be sealed. Under court order, the records cannot be disclosed or revealed except in a limited set of situations.

Despite dismissal of the criminal charges, and despite their client’s innocence, records of the charges themselves and records of the client’s arrest remained. Those records had the potential to seriously infringe upon her ability to maintain her employment given that the client was employed in a highly sensitive and professional capacity.

The firm secured a statutory expungement—however, the expungement itself was even more comprehensive than a typical statutory expungement. The firm petitioned for their client to be designated as a crime victim for purposes of expungement given the significant amount of evidence that conduct attributable to the firm’s client was done in defending herself from her aggressor. The referee of the district court hearing the request for expungement agreed that the client should be designated a crime victim, affording the client another shield against disclosure of these records in the future.