The state Public Defender’s Office and the Judiciary will team up this weekend for a first-of-its-kind event in Waianae to provide free legal assistance for people who have had trouble with the law and need a fresh start.
The clinic Saturday at the Waianae Public Library will be staffed by volunteer lawyers and at least one judge who will help residents cope with District Court bench warrants or move to have their arrest records expunged.
The Legislature has moved cautiously in recent years on more ambitious proposals to expunge convictions for marijuana possession and other offenses, and organizers see the clinic as a modest way to help some people in the meantime.
The bench warrant portion of the clinic is aimed at people who failed to show up in court for traffic violations or missed other mandatory District Court dates, Deputy Public Defender Edward Aquino said.
People who ignore those warrants may later be surprised and arrested during a traffic stop or some other encounter with police, Aquino said.
“We can help our clients, and we can in general help the community” by dealing with the issue before that happens, he said.
“We do have a lot people — they’re just normal folks like you and me — they miss a court date and there’s something outstanding, and it’s not easy when you realize there’s something hanging over your head and you don’t have bail money to go ahead and post the bail,” Aquino said.
“You never know if you’re going to get stopped, so this is one way just to get them back on track,” he said.
Deputy public defenders at the clinic will review each case and prepare motions to recall the bench warrants. One or more judges will also be on hand to review and sign off on the documents to cancel the warrants and to assign new court dates to the participants.
Participants do not need to put up bail money to dispose of the bench warrants, Aquino said. The clinic staff will be able to deal with warrants issued in connection with misdemeanors, petty misdemeanors and traffic violations.
Melanie May, deputy chief judge in the First Circuit District Court, said in a written statement that clinic participants will be able to request recall of Oahu District Court bench warrants and schedule new court dates “without fear of arrest.”
The other half of the clinic will deal with expungement of arrest records for people who were arrested but not convicted. That includes people who accepted deferred acceptance of guilty or no-contest pleas, people who were acquitted by the courts and people who were arrested but never prosecuted.
Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, said state law allows for expungement in such cases, but the process can be difficult to navigate. It takes about four months to get through it, and costs $45 in fees and processing costs for first-time expungements.
Meanwhile, an arrest or conviction record can derail efforts to put past entanglements with the criminal justice system behind them.
Michelle Manalo, director of finance for the nonprofit Going Home Hawaii, recalls an incident long after she was convicted on drug charges, imprisoned and released. She applied for work at a retail chain on the Big Island, and the job seemed like a sure thing. But that turned out not to be the case.
Manalo had worked at that very same retail chain for seven years after she was released from prison, but she quit the company to pursue an accounting career in 2017. By the time she left, she had worked her way up from cashier to supervisor.
A year after quitting Manalo went back to the same retailer seeking part-time weekend work only to be told her application was rejected because she failed a background check by the corporate owners.
“That was a stunner, it was really confusing,” Manalo said. “I told my former boss, ‘I worked for you and I had keys to the store for seven years, and a year or two later I’m un-hirable?’ She was clueless as well.”
The clinic is designed to support people who want their arrest records expunged, which is allowed under Hawaii law in many cases where the applicants have not been convicted. That process is handled by the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, which will have staff at the clinic on Saturday.
“Expungement is an important process for people to really, truly have a second chance and move forward in their lives,” Shirota said. Arrests without convictions cannot be used under state law to deny people employment, but in reality that sometimes happens, she said.
Volunteer lawyers will be on hand to review the individual facts of each case and to walk eligible people through the process, including helping them with the form used for expungement, she said.
Records of certain convictions can also be expunged by the courts — such as for some first-time property and drug offenders — but that involves a separate process that will not be handled by the staff at the clinic on Saturday, Shirota said.
The ACLU has been lobbying state lawmakers for the past several years to pass sweeping changes to state law to make expungement of convictions automatic in many cases, including one measure informally known as the “Clean Slate” bill.
Lawmakers have not embraced that idea, which has encountered opposition from county prosecutors and others. But the Legislature did create a Clean Slate Expungement Task Force this year to study the issue.
Joining in the clinic along with the Judiciary and the Public Defender’s office are the ACLU, Volunteer Legal Services of Hawaii, the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii Manoa, Hawaii Workers Center, and Project E4.
Organizers of the event are strongly encouraging people who want warrants recalled or want to pursue expungement to preregister, but the clinic will also accept walk-ins.
Original article can be found at: https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/09/volunteers-to-help-people-clear-up-min...