Court Opinion

ID: 9761383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:41:13.410933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:23.268273
License: Public Domain

HOFFMAN, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I agree that the records of the simple assault arrest should be expunged. However, I vigorously dissent to the affirmance of the lower court’s refusal to expunge the records of the theft arrest.
*502In Commonwealth v. Malone, 244 Pa.Super. 62, 69, 366 A.2d 584, 588 (1976), we held that an innocent person has a constitutional right to expungement because “[pjunishment of the innocent is the clearest denial of life, liberty and property without due process of law.” Consistent with Malone, we also stated recently in Commonwealth v. Mueller, 258 Pa.Super. 219, 223, 392 A.2d 763, 765 (1978), that while expungement is not required where a prosecution is terminated for reasons unrelated to guilt or innocence, ex-pungement is constitutionally necessary to prevent punishment of an innocent person. Even more recently, in Commonwealth v. Rose, 263 Pa.Super. 349, 351, 397 A.2d 1243, 1244 (1979), we ordered petitioner’s arrest records for retail theft expunged because “[t]he record of the [expungement] hearing . . . and the fact of [petitioner’s] acquittal . establish that [petitioner] was acquitted because the Commonwealth failed to establish her guilt and not because of any procedural factors unrelated to culpability.” Thus, all of our en banc cases clearly hold that when a person is acquitted of charges against him on the merits, and at his expungement hearing satisfies the hearing judge of his innocence of the same charges, his arrest records must be expunged as a matter of constitutional right.
Here, it is conceded that the jury found appellant not guilty of the theft charge after a full and fair trial. However, the majority refuses to order expungement because “[ajppellant failed to demonstrate affirmatively a lack of culpability or a mistaken arrest.” This statement is refuted by the records. The expungement hearing judge below, who also presided over appellant’s theft trial, made a finding of fact on the record that appellant had demonstrated his innocence of the charges. He stated: “I personally feel you were done an injustice and I agree with the jury verdict. [A]s far as I am concerned it was a case of mistaken identity . . . . It [the crime charged] was so completely inconsistent with the background of the case. I think that is what led to the jury’s verdict.” (emphasis *503added). Because appellant has affirmatively demonstrated his innocence to the expungement hearing court, his arrest record must be expunged as a matter of constitutional right.
The majority suggests two other reasons why we can refuse to expunge. The first is that the Commonwealth made out a prima facie case against appellant because of two witnesses who made positive identifications of appellant. The short answer to this is that the jury’s verdict shows that those identifications were mistaken. At trial, appellant presented no defense except alibi. The most unequivocal identification can be mistaken, as the jury must have found and the hearing judge explicitly found. Secondly, the majority states that appellant failed to show any future harm due to the maintenance of his arrest records because he has been reinstated to his employment. Even assuming that this sort of proof is necessary where the petitioner has affirmatively demonstrated his innocence, the majority misses the point here. An arrest record hangs like the sword of Damocles over one’s life. The mistakenly arrested person never knows when it will cause a denial of credit, loss of a new job, or simply the loss of esteem, trust, and respect from other members of the community.1 See Menard v. Mitchell, 430 F.2d 486, 490-91 (1970).
There is no basis for the majority’s refusal to order expungement of the records of appellant’s theft arrest. By affirming, the majority has disregarded both the findings of the court below and the verdict of the jury at the theft trial. They have weakened the principles of Malone and Mueller and ignored Rose, a case on all fours with the instant case. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.

. In fact, this case is a vivid example of the importance of expungement to law-abiding persons who are mistakenly arrested. Appellant was here arrested on the theft charge because of the witnesses’ (mistaken) identifications of him from a police photograph maintained in his records from the assault arrest! In other words, if appellant’s assault records had been promptly expunged (as we today order they must), appellant never would have been arrested, suspended from his job, and placed in jeopardy at a criminal trial.