Court Opinion

ID: 9701911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:43:19.568638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:30.697429
License: Public Domain

VAN der VOORT, Judge(
dissenting):
The appellant, Thomas Malone, appeals from the denial of his petition for expungement of his arrest record, fol*72lowing the dismissal of charges against him at the preliminary hearing. This appeal raises interesting and thought-provoking arguments concerning whether a right of expungement, as a general principle, exists in the courts of our Commonwealth.1 We are assisted in our consideration of this issue, which appears to be a question of first impression in the appellate courts of Pennsylvania, by excellent briefs and well developed arguments by the appellant and the Commonwealth.
The appellant seeks to have our Court order the lower court to grant him a hearing on his expungement request. As his brief relates, he hopes to show, at such hearing, that denial of the petition will cause serious harm to and stigmatize petitioner. Moreover, he contends that the denial of expungement will operate to cause a violation of his rights to privacy, allegedly in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article One of the Pennsylvania Constitution. After a thorough review of all of the arguments raised and consideration of the cases, statutes and constitutional provisions cited, I must respectfully dissent from the holding of the majority of our Court that the lower court committed error in denying expungement in the instant case. My conclusion is based upon my interpretation of clear legislative intent with respect to the subject of criminal records and a conclusion that there has been no infringement of any constitutionally granted right in the circumstances of the instant case.
In the analysis of this issue, it is useful to examine the legal basis for the record-keeping functions performed by various law enforcement authorities.2 The Act of April *7327, 1927, P.L. 414, § 1 et seq., 19 P.S. § 1401 et seq., as amended, provides inter alia that the State Police and other law enforcement and corrections personnel, including district attorneys and all police officers of all political subdivisions shall have the authority to take fingerprints and photographs of any person “charged with the commission of crime”. All such records and “other information as may be pertinent” are to be filed for record by the State Police. Local authorities are to send any such records daily to the State Police and all police agencies are commanded to participate in the effort to establish a system for criminal investigation. Appellant does not challenge such legislative mandate and the need and value of such an identification system to our law enforcement agencies in efforts to combat crime in our Commonwealth cannot be reasonably contested. The Act further orders our Pennsylvania State Police to cooperate with police agencies of our sister states and the United States to exchange records and to participate in a complete interstate, national and even international system of criminal investigation and identification. The federal enabling statute, 28 U.S.C. § 534, provides that the United States Attorney General, or his designee (in actuality the Federal Bureau of Investigation) will perform such criminal record-keeping functions.
In addition to the provisions of the Act of April 27, 1927, briefly outlined above, other sections are particularly germane to the issue of expungement. For instance, Section 6 (19 P.S. § 1406) provides, in pertinent part:
“Any person who removes, destroys, or mutilates any of the records of the Pennsylvania State Police, or of any district attorney, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and such person shall, upon conviction there*74of, be punished by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail for a period of not exceeding one year, or by both, in the discretion of the court.”
This proviso for criminal sanctions upon the elimination of identification records evidences an unqualified additional legislative intent that such records be preserved and not expunged. Another section of the Act is even more indicative of the legislature’s consideration of ex-pungement. Section 5(c) of the Act (19 P.S. § 1405(c) ) provides, in part:
“(c) The district attorneys of the several counties shall keep and arrange files of the fingerprints, taken under the provisions of this act, of persons convicted of crime and shall destroy the fingerprints of all persons acquitted.”
Significantly the legislation does not extend its mandate for destruction of records of those acquitted of criminal charges to any authority other than the district attorney nor to any record other than fingerprints in the possession of the said district attorney. It is highly significant that the legislature made provisions in the same Act which not only permit, but command the collection and retention of identification records of those accused of crime, and which direct the destruction of only one type of such records by one record-keeping agency upon acquittal, and makes further provision that the destruction of all other such records would be clearly prohibited, even to the point of criminal sanctions against one who would ignore such prohibition.
Although the Act of April 27, 1927 gives a clear and unmistakable signal of legislative intent on the subject of expungement, review and interpretation is facilitated by other legislative action. Quite recently, the Child Protective Services Law became effective in our Commonwealth. Act of November 26, 1975, P.L. 438, No. 124, § 1 et seq., 11 P.S. § 2201 et seq. This statute, which pro*75vides for substantial record keeping by public authorities in attempts to curb child abuse, provides explicitly for expungement of records of certain child abuse cases (such as unfounded accusations of abuse) in certain well-defined circumstances. See Act of November 26, 1975, P.L. 438, No. 124, § 14, 11 P.S. § 2214. Another piece of relatively recent legislation, The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act (Act of April 14, 1972, P.L. 233, No. 64, § 1 et seq., 35 P.S. § 780-101 et seq., eff. June 14, 1972) also contains explicit provisos for expungement, in limited circumstances, of criminal records resulting from prosecutions under that Act which have been withdrawn or dismissed or resulted in acquittals. See Act of April 14, 1972, P.L. 233, No. 64, § 19, as amended, 35 P.S. § 780-119, as amended. Clearly, the legislature has not ignored the subject of expungement of criminal records in cases of nonconviction. It is highly significant that our statutory law permits or even commands, expungement of records resulting from criminal charges in certain well-defined and explicitly limited circumstances, yet provides criminal penalties for destruction or removal of similar records in all other cases. The legislative intent could not be more clear.
My colleagues on the majority feel that the appellant is entitled to a hearing before the lower court to enable him to present his arguments in support of his right to expungement. The lower court held that it has no authority to order expungement, and I am compelled, by my interpretation of legislative intent to agree. Not only has the legislature dealt with the subject of ex-pungement of criminal identification records in our Commonwealth, but it has fashioned very careful guidelines and declared clearly limited circumstances wherein ex-pungement is to be permitted. Moreover, no convincing reason has been advanced to indicate that such guidelines violate the constitutional right of any person.
I am mindful that expungement requests have been granted by our trial courts on many occasions in the *76past. For the first time in the instant case, however, we are squarely faced with the question of whether a lower court commits error in denying an expungement request. No matter what personal thoughts may be upon the subject of expungement in general, I feel constrained to reach this result, on this question of first impression, by my interpretation of absolutely clear legislative intent. See Scott Township Appeal, 388 Pa. 539, 543, 130 A.2d 695, 698 (1957). There is certainly a body of well reasoned thought favoring the broader establishment of ex-pungement principles in the laws of our country. See Comment: “Arrest Records — Protecting the Innocent”, 48 Tul.L.Rev. 629 (1974); “Retention and Dissemination of Arrest Records: Judicial Response”, 38 U.Chi.L.Rev. 850 (1971); Hess and LePoole, “Abuse of the Record of Arrest Not Leading to Conviction”, 13 Crime and Delinquency 494 (1967). Perhaps, if the legislature examined this issue anew, fresh guidelines might be enacted in our laws to permit expungements in our Commonwealth in cases like the instant one. I cannot agree however that such right is presently existent and I therefore dissent.
JACOBS and PRICE, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.

. In certain limited circumstances, as will be discussed infra in this opinion, there has been legislation establishing the right of expungement in certain limited contexts.

. Specifically, the appellant, in his petition, sought the Court’s Order to direct the Chief of Police in Harrisburg and the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police to expunge all finger*73prints, photographs, photographic plates, and records of the arrest from their files, and further to have them request the return of all information and records furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.