March 25, 2009 — The Virgin Islands chief public defender on Tuesday asked members of the Senate to help him remove a "ball and chain" that's weighing down many residents of the islands — an arrest record that, even though there was no conviction, still clouds their futures.
Testifying before the Senate's Committee on Public Safety, Homeland Security and Justice, Chief Public Defender Harold Willocks sought support for a law to allow a person's arrest record to be expunged if the arrest did not result in a conviction of a crime.
"There's a huge amount of citizens who in the past — whether they were guilty or not — came across the police," Willocks said. In many instances the case never goes to trial or the defendant is found not guilty. But even though they've not been convicted of a crime, their arrest is still a matter of record that follows them through the rest of their life.
"They're burdened with this ball and chain, some going back 40 years or more," he told the senators. And that adds to his burden, he added.
"At least once a week someone calls me to say 'I have some record back there. Could somebody clean that up for me?'"
"The Virgin Islands is one of the few places in the nation that does not have an expungement statute," Willocks said.
In states with such a law, the record of the arrest is wiped clean and sealed and the person — by law — can answer "no" to the question, "Have you ever been arrested for a felony/"
In some cases, the record is more than an embarrassment or a nuisance, he added.
"I've had over 20 young men and ladies dependent on this to keep their jobs," he said. "They stand a very good chance of losing their jobs because there's no way to get their record expunged."
Willocks brought a case to the Virgin Islands Supreme Court seeking to have arrest records expunged, but the court ruled it was powerless to act.
"The Supreme Court ruled this (the Senate) is the body to do something about it," he said.
Members of the committee expressed support for the proposal and asked to see proposed wording for such a measure, and Willocks promised to get it to them immediately.
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