State v. CA, 50817.
| Decision Date | 17 April 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 50817.,50817. |
| Citation | 304 NW 2d 353 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. C. A., Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Meshbesher, Singer & Spence, Ronald I. Meshbesher, and Carol Grant, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, R. Kathleen Morris, Scott County Atty., Shakopee, for respondent.
Heard, considered and decided by the court en banc.
C.A.1 appeals from an order granting in part and denying in part his motions for expungement of criminal records in the hands of various governmental officials. The relief appellant requested was wide-ranging and cast in the most general terms: every local or state government record documenting the fact of his arrest, trial and conviction would have been returned, erased or sealed from public view; public officials and employees would have been stopped from divulging these facts. Although we affirm the trial court's denial of the bulk of C.A.'s requests as stated in his motions, we do not imply that relief may never be properly granted.
Appellant does not now stand convicted of the crime which generated the records he wishes to expunge. Appellant had been charged with consensual sodomy, a gross misdemeanor, and convicted by a jury in December of 1977. In connection with this charge and conviction, appellant was temporarily committed to the Minnesota Security Hospital at St. Peter and to the state correctional facility at Stillwater. In December of 1978, we set aside appellant's conviction pursuant to a stipulated agreement between the defense and the state to remand the case to the district court for a new trial. The charges against appellant were subsequently dropped and he was never retried. Appellant had no prior convictions.
Appellant claims that he is entitled to the relief he requests under Minn.Stat. § 299C.11 (1980) as interpreted by this court in In re R. L. F., 256 N.W.2d 803 (Minn. 1977). Appellant has not argued before this court that his motions should be based on inherent powers of courts to remedy serious infringements of constitutional rights, in addition to the statutory authorities of section 299C.11, although this argument was made to the trial court. The court's inherent power to remedy serious infringements of constitutional rights was outlined in In re R. L. F., id. at 808. We do not consider this aspect of the court's inherent power in this appeal.
The statute relied upon by appellant reads in full as follows:
Minn.Stat. § 299C.11 (1980) (emphasis added).
C.A. twice moved the trial court for an order encompassing the following:2
1. "Requiring" the county sheriff "to forthwith return to the defendant all finger and thumb prints, photographs and other identification data, and all copies and duplicates thereof";
2. "Requiring" the county sheriff "and all his agents from disclosing to anyone the fact that the defendant had been arrested and charged";
3. "Forbidding" the county attorney's office, the police department, the state bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA), the clerk of the district court, the Minnesota Security Hospital at St. Peter, the corrections board, and the Minnesota correctional facility at Stillwater "from disclosing to anyone the fact that the defendant had been arrested, charged or brought to trial";
4. "Requiring that all recordation relating to the arrest, complaint, trial, dismissal and discharge of the defendant be expunged from all official records" of the city, county, state of Minnesota and "all other governmental agencies";
5. "Requiring" the clerk of the district court to "seal" the court file "relating to the complaint of the defendant";
6. "Forbidding" the clerk of the district court "and all his agents from disclosing or revealing the contents" of the file "without Court Order";
7. "Requiring" the clerk of the district court to "remove from all index books open to public examination the caption of this case and the name of the defendant as it relates to this case";
8. "Requiring" the county sheriff's office and the bureau of criminal apprehension "to request the Federal Bureau of Investigation to return all the defendant's records transmitted to the FBI in connection with this case, including finger and thumb prints, photographs and other identification data, and all copies and duplicates thereof; and after the receipt thereof requiring" the county sheriff's office and the bureau of criminal apprehension "to return all such data to the defendant";
9. "Requiring" the state security hospital at St. Peter "to return to the defendant its complete file, including all copies thereof, relating to the defendant's hospitalization" in connection with this case;
10. "Requiring" the state correctional facility at Stillwater "to return to the defendant its complete file, including all copies thereof, relating to the defendant's incarceration" in connection with this case;
11. "Protecting" the defendant from being adjudged guilty of "perjury or otherwise giving a false statement by reason of his failure" to state the fact of his arrest, complaint or trial "in response to any inquiry made of him for any purpose";
12. A "prohibition of the further transcription of any testimony in the case, or dissemination to any persons of (a) any of the testimony offered at the trial of this case or pre-trial proceedings, and (b) the identity of all witnesses who testified at all proceedings herein, specifically prohibiting the court reporter or any of his agents from providing transcription of any testimony in this proceeding to any person."
We find that the trial court properly concluded that section 299C.11 authorized none of appellant's requests as he made them other than his first one above, the order requiring the sheriff to return to the defendant finger and thumb prints, photographs, other identification data and all copies.3 The trial court also properly concluded that appellant had not substantiated a serious infringement of constitutional rights justifying the exercise of the court's inherent powers to remedy such infringements.
Our judgment is that the trial court should in all respects be affirmed, given the record of this case and the manner in which appellant formulated his motions. Nevertheless, it is within the power of the courts to grant broader relief than was had here. For future guidance, we give this explanation of our denial of the major portions of appellant's motions.
Our decision in this case is based in part upon the statutory authority to order expungement of criminal records provided by the legislature in section 299C.11 and in part upon the limitations of the inherent authority of courts to issue protective orders. The verb, "to expunge," literally means to destroy or obliterate. Black's Law Dictionary 522 (5th ed. 1979). But the kind of relief granted by statutory or judicial authority which has been called "expungement" is not limited to destruction of records. Such relief may consist of the return of the records to the person seeking relief, or the sealing of the records, subject to reopening only upon court order, rather than destruction.4 The statute in issue in this appeal, Minn.Stat. § 299C.11 (1980), which provides for the return of some criminal records, could be considered to be a kind of "expungement."
Beyond the outlines of statutory authority, courts have inherent authority to grant relief which might be called expungement, in some kinds of cases. See In re R. L. F., 256 N.W.2d 803 (Minn.1977).5 In In re R. L. F. we discussed one aspect of the inherent authority of courts, the power to fashion relief necessary to prevent serious infringement of constitutional rights. 256 N.W.2d at 808. There we wrote:
In all cases where statutes so provide, the court is clearly empowered to order expungement; in cases to which our statutory scheme does not extend, the court\'s inherent power is limited to instances where the petitioner\'s constitutional rights may be seriously infringed by retention of his records.
Id. But it has not been argued before this court that there has been a serious infringement of appellant's constitutional rights.
In this case we must consider yet another aspect of inherent authority held by courts.6 The petitioner has made numerous requests affecting court records and agents and employees of the court system. Our consideration in In re R. L. F. was focused on an interpretation of section 299C.11 and inherent authority to remedy serious violations of constitutional rights. We were not there presented with the issue, to the degree reflected here, of inherent power enabling courts to grant relief when it is necessary to the performance of their unique judicial functions.
The inherent authority of the courts to control the performance of judicial functions is well established. State v. Osterloh, 275 N.W.2d 578, 580 (Minn.197...
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