 So good morning committee for the record bring hair from Legislative Council. You do have a new draft of S7, which I'm happy to put on my screen if that's helpful for people. Is that 1.2? Nope. Nope. It's draft 2.1. Can you send it to me also, Brandon, I'll test it. Sure. I thought I did. Sorry about that. No worries. Okay. So I think you should have that in a moment. And usually it's helpful for this community if I share my screen. Is that right? Yes. Yep. Okay. Can you see draft 2.1 S7? Yep. Can you blow it up a little bit? Sure. Perfect. Was that? That's good. That's good. All right. I'm just going to try and move it. Can you still see it? Yep. Okay. Great. I've got so many screens here. Perfect. Okay. Great. So just a few changes to this version from draft, I think 1.2, which you looked at before town meeting week. So I'm going to jump to those changes. And the first one is on page 9, I'll just remind the committee, these were just the last few points that you were discussing with respect to this bill last week. So the change here, this is that provision that you looked at before that says that only the office that prosecuted the case can stipulate to a petition to seal or expunge that's filed prior to the date that the offense is eligible pursuant to the statute. And I've just added a little additional language here to clarify that this only applies if the person is petitioning to seal or expunge prior to the date that the offense is eligible as provided according to the statute. So I think there was some conversations still ongoing about that, about that. Yeah, we're not seeing that change, Bryn, can you scroll up on your version? We're only on page. We're only seeing. Oh, really? Okay. Let me try. There we go. If the person petitions. Yep. Yep. Okay. So the language in yellow is new and again, it just, it adds some additional clarifying language that provides that if it's this, this applies only if the person is petitioning prior to the date that the offense is eligible according to the statute. By the way, that Peggy has posted the version on the website if people want to follow. Go ahead, Bryn. Okay. So the next change is on the following page. And this is the new language that deals with that the, the provision of the committee has been spending some time talking about where a person is subject to a probation term that is dependent on a condition of that probation that requires them to pay restitution. So this language comes from originated from the defender general's office and I just made a few changes to that proposed language. I don't think it's altered the spirit of the language at all, but it makes it clear what kind of circumstances we're talking about. So it provides that anyone who's convicted of a qualifying offense for which that person has to serve a probation term, a condition of which is that payment of restitution is entitled to petition the court to seal or expunge that offense once their probation term is completed. And then the second sentence says that the petition has to request that the court in the interest of justice adjust the waiting period for the ceiling or expungement as it set out in the statute. And then it directs the court to consider this request. And in considering adjusting the waiting period, the court has to consider the nature and circumstances of the offense, typical sentences for similar offenses and the length of the sentence that was served by the petitioner and deciding whether to adjust the waiting period and any adjusted duration before the person is eligible for ceiling or expungement. Brynn. Yes. Just a quick question about the first sentence. It says that they may that they may apply on completion of the probation term. Is that including restitution? So that I my understanding is that that would include restitution if the probation term is depend has it as a condition of the probation require the defendant to pay restitution. So it doesn't explicitly say that, but I think it's implied by the fact that yeah, I thought that one of the things and Joe correct me if I'm wrong on this, I thought one of the things we were discussing was that those people who had had restitution as a condition that held them out of the ceiling and expungement process for such a long time sometimes, as in the case of Erica Reddick. Is this in line with what you were hoping for Joe? Well, some people keep in mind we're dealing with a limited number of individuals now, but some people have been given a probation sentence that has the limitation of until further order of the court. One of their combined or conditions of probation is that they pay restitution. So when it takes an extremely long period of time to pay that restitution, maybe it's $5 a week or whatever the case may be on a $10,000 judgment under that situation, they would still remain on probation until further order of the court. And I'm not sure that this language has written would take care of that kind of a situation. Did we hear that they're not doing that anymore? And so it's mainly people. It's mainly people who are so maybe we need to put in something there about people who are currently in that situation. Yeah, I would agree because they are not doing that anymore. So we're talking about a finite group of individuals. Right. How do we do that? We toss it to Ledge Council. OK, so can I can I can I hear that once more? I was trying to adjust my. OK, so blinds to so I wasn't so so to improve my picture. Go ahead. There are some people out there who have. Been sentenced in a way that their probation term reads until further order of the court you're on probation until further order of the court. So there's no finite term for them at that point. One of the conditions of probation that they have is to pay back restitution. If their restitution is an extremely small amount on a very large bill that could mean they are on probation for many years. Well beyond what anybody would normally be on for this particular situation. And they're only there because they're on this payment plan that's keeping them held up. The question is, how do you address those people and give them an offer of expungement? If that open ended. Term is still. They're laboring under that open ended term. And I'm trying to read the language four and five times over as we speak, trying to figure out how to resolve that. So is the idea for the person to be eligible prior to satisfying the condition of paying the restitution? Well, that's I guess would be my hope. I'm not sure how you get there. And I think Judge Greerson had some concern about that. And I don't know how we reach a middle ground. I can't remember his concern. Oh, there he is. I'm here. Right now, in order for a person to be eligible for sealing or expungement, they have to have completed their sentence, i.e. they are no longer on probation. And they have to have paid restitution or completed their restitution because this involves just a very small number of individuals. And I don't know the exact language, but in concept, I think you could say that if they've served a term of probation with payment of restitution as a condition of probation, once the restitution has been paid, the person could seek a discharge of, and assuming that's the only condition that's keeping them on probation at that time. Once they have paid the restitution, they could seek a discharge. And if that discharge is granted, then the court could consider a request. That begins on page 13, line 13. Person could then request that the court in the interest just to shorten the waiting period for for sealing or expungement. So I think you have to start. You have to start with the discharge being granted. But the problem is that they'll never pay off their restitution. Couldn't we say as we did with fees, when we didn't want the payment of fees to withhold certain candidates, we just said that the payment of fees wouldn't be a factor. Couldn't we say here that failure to complete payment of restitution will not in and of itself disqualify a candidate? Yeah. What I don't know, Senator, is on these old cases, and maybe Senator Benning may be familiar with it, or David Cher, if he's still on. When it was a condition of probation, I'm not sure that they entered into a so-called restitution order in addition to being on probation with a condition of paying restitution. So if you discharge them from probation, and that's the only condition that's out there, there's nothing to enforce at that point. In other words, there's no way to track the restitution. But if I remember the individual who came before the committee, I thought that that was a situation where she had paid the restitution and couldn't get off probation, and therefore, because it was till further order of the court, and therefore, couldn't apply for sealing and expungement. I think it's more common to find that the person has paid the restitution, but they've got this outstanding probation until further order of the court, but I could be wrong. I think you're still going to want a discharge from probation and then couple that with a request to shorten the period waiting for sealing or expungement. I think we need to do something about the people who are on a $5 a week. Payment or $5 a month or whatever it is, that just are going to be there forever and ever if they can't. Do we know that those people actually exist that haven't paid the restitution? If you're asking me, I don't have a number on that. I don't know how many people would be affected by it. Because I thought that was the issue, that they couldn't pay off the restitution. I could be wrong, but I thought it was the reverse that they had paid restitution, but couldn't get off probation. Judge, is it your opinion that anybody who is subject to a restitution responsibility is going to avoid that restitution if they are no longer on probation? Because we have this restitution unit, it's now a civil enforcement process, and I'm trying to wrap my head around what happens if you did give them permission to get an expungement. Does that necessarily leave them no longer responsible to the restitution unit? The problem is that if you seal or expunge the underlying case, they're effectively, you've taken away the basis for the judgment that was entered. I think you'd need to talk with the restitution unit to really understand the implications of that. That's my understanding from past testimony that they've provided. I know from a debt collection standpoint, if you eliminate the judgment, you've eliminated the ability to collect the debt. And so I think that's the problem with that's why restitution right now under the statute has to be paid before. But this still requires the payment of the restitution, right? This does. But the question is, as I read this language now and the question has been raised by the committee, is the person still on probation? And so I'm saying if you couple this ability to request a shortened sealing or expungement record, I think it would certainly address the issues, because I understood the individual that appeared before the committee. In other words, discharge them from probation and then allow the court to consider a shortened period for restitution. But this doesn't provide for discharge right now. And so they haven't completed their sentence and therefore they're not eligible. The time period for eligibility for sealing and expungement hasn't occurred. You've got to eliminate that conviction. I'm sorry, you've got to, they have to have completed their sentence. Whatever word we're using, completed or executed, they satisfied. That's, I think that's once they've satisfied the restitution. Yeah, I think they're protected once they've satisfied it. The question is whether or not, if they're stuck on this $5 a week payment plan for 20 years to pay off whatever this massive bill was, they can never get their record expunged. And this may be something we can't solve. It may just be something that we have to leave. And I'm not sure what else to do about it at this stage. I don't think there's much you can do until at last you can go back to court and have the conditions changed. And we didn't, we do that in a different bill. And the probation bill, don't we allow for, in S45, didn't we allow for somebody to go back to court to change conditions? And that was a midpoint review. There was. Right. So I think they could do that. They could say, you know, this $5 a month's keeping me on probation for the next 20 years. Is there a way we can resolve this and whatever. Marsha Paul had that idea of, to allow a judge to recalculate the term of probation and of the sentence after the, if the sentence was completed and then just go with the restitution. I don't know. Yep. That's, that is, this is the language that the defender general's office submitted. I've just amended some of the wording a little bit, but I'll let Marsha weigh in as to whether he has any comments on that. No, this is, this is substantively the same proposal that we had made and it was to address, you know, not a situation of someone who is stuck paying a small amount every week for a long period of time. This does not solve that problem. It wasn't intended to. This just deals with the problem of someone who had pro restitution as a condition of probation. And because of that, it took them a very long time to complete their probation, to complete their restitution. And this simply allows the court to, so for example, in Ms. Reddick's case, she was off probation and done paying restitution, but she still had a long time to wait before she could get an expungement. And this would allow a court to recalculate that waiting period, because she was on probation for sort of an artificially long time. And that's all that this language was intended to address. But Marsha, would you agree that they have to be discharged from probation in order to do that calculation first? Yes, I mean, I think the intent of the language that I drafted was that they are off probation because that if they have restitution as a term of probation, then the idea was, because I wasn't in proposing this language, I wasn't trying to change anything substantive about how restitution is currently collected for the criteria for collecting restitution or even the criteria for getting a ceiling or expungement. So this wasn't meant to make it, that there was a way to get an expungement while you still owed restitution. It would be best to deal with that, with Eric Reddick's problem. Does this satisfy the committee to solve that problem? I think the other problem solved in S45. Yeah. Yes. That explanation helped. Yeah. All right? Yeah. Moving right along, Bryn. Yeah. So I did hear Judge Grierson say that we may need to change just this completion of the probation term to satisfy as the judgment for the offense, which would make that language more in line with the requirements and the rest of the statute. Does that make sense to everybody? Yep. Okay. So the next change is just something that no longer appears in the bill. And if you remember that you spent some time at the last hearing about the issue of the particular breakout waiting periods of a person was convicted of a subsequent offense for certain qualifying offenses. And we've just removed all of that waiting period language and gone back to the version that was passed last year. Everybody remember that? Nope. It's actually on page 17. That language doesn't appear anymore. And that's, those are all of the changes that are made in this version. Bryn. Yep. That language that we removed, that was May Read's language that was three years. Right. That was the proposal from Legal Aid, yes, to make different waiting periods for certain offenses. Okay, great. And that is it. Those are the only three changes from the last draft. Fantastic. I would say. Yep. Are there any further comments from anyone? Who's in the room? Okay. Committee, any further comments on this? Now we have to have a new draft number or can we get somebody proposed? So I could just. Yeah. Oh, sorry. It will have a new draft. It will have a new draft number. Yes, it will be draft 3.1. So I'm, I'll move that we amend S7 with, that we accept the amendments to S7 in draft 3.1. Is there any further discussion? I do want to mention that we have a letter of support on our webpage of four S7 from Anthony Lamora. I've probably announced the name from the R Street group in Washington, DC. Governor affairs associate. I said she is and whoever reports this bill might want to read that article has a lot of information about the economic impact of the funding. So Peggy, would you please call the wall? Senator Benning. Yes. Senator Nitta. Yes. Senator Wayne. Yes. Senator Baruth. Yes. Senator Sears. Yes. So now I move that we report favorably S7 as amended with 3.1. Senator White moves that we report favorably S7 as seen and as amended by draft 3.1. Is there further discussion by anybody in the room? Anybody on the committee? No. Hearing none, Peggy, would you please call the roll? Senator Benning. Yes. Senator Nitta. Yes. Senator White. Yes. Senator Baruth. Yes. Senator Sears. Yes. All right. Who would like to report a S7? Senator Baruth. I'm actually hoping to report another bill. Okay. Well, hopefully you'll get a positive vote on that bill. Well, that's, I'm a cop, I'd have to move. Senator Benning normally reports expungement bills. Yeah. That's a good choice. Is that a yes, Senator Benning? It sounds like I'm entering into default, Peggy. No, seriously, if somebody, I've reported quite a few bills and I am planning to work with Senator White to report S3, get a favorable vote. Well, Bryn, can you get me a short blurb on the bill? Peggy, can you get me a list of the witnesses? And Bryn, when you get the new draft in, I have to send that off to John Bloomer for registering purposes. Yep. I just sent it to the committee and I will get you a section by section. Actually, it's a lot easier. This is one thing that's easier on Zoom is filing reports, getting them up to the Secretary's office. I find it's much more difficult because I don't have that piece of paper and so I forget to send it. When I get the piece of paper, I... Well, Peggy sends us the note and reminds us what to do, which... Yeah, I know. Even then, I forget. Solve the problem for me. Well, Senator White. Oh, gosh, I hope you don't lose, that's 107. No, I already sent that one up. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there any further discussion on any issues? Not, I suggest this has been a really productive meeting. And I, again, I wanted to emphasize that I take responsibility for not having DMH aware of the amendment this morning to S7.