More than eight hundred Kentuckians have cleared their records under state senator Whitney Westerfield’s expungement law passed last year.
Some sixty-one Class D felonies are eligible for expungement under the law, including identity theft and drug possession.
Around 1,300 people applied, but Westerfield said the bar for expungement is high because the felony is completely removed from a person’s record. He said a conviction on a person's record presents employability and transportation issues but the law helps those who served their time and earned the right for expungement.
Brad Clark is an attorney-at-law and the founder of unconvicted.com, a website and app that allows people to see if they qualify for expungement. He said the expungement law is life-changing for his clients.
“We had a client last year who loved hunting and had been an avid sportsman all his life,” Clark said. “And then thirty years ago or so he had picked up a minor charge that disqualified him from owning a firearm and then for the first time last year he got to go back to deer season. He sent us a big bag of deer jerky.”
Clark said the expungements can also offer relief for clients in working class jobs.
“We’ve had several clients that have no longer been scared that if somebody acquires their company they’ll be out of a job because they might start running background checks,” Clark said.
Westerfield said the law is a step towards helping people help themselves. The application costs $500 to make a motion to the commonwealth to vacate felony convictions. The fee is refundable to $450 if there is an objection to a person’s application. Repeat offenders are not eligible for expungement.
